Antonya Nelson Quotes

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

I revise constantly, as I go along and then again after I've finished a first draft. Few of my novels contain a single sentence that closely resembles the sentence I first set down. I just find that I have to keep zapping and zapping the English language until it starts to behave in some way that vaguely matches my intentions.

I probably spend 90% of my time revising what I've written.

Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.

Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place.

Accepting that part of the process of writing is deleting a lot of what you write is soothing, at least to me.

I've learned to really love revision over the years and worked hard to build up my craft muscle to make my revisions less and less painful with each book.

Writing is rewriting what you have rewritten.

I like revising much, much better than getting down a first draft. The first draft is just getting the pieces to the puzzle. Then I get to put the puzzle together!

I have to re-write a lot. I couldn't tell you how many drafts I write, but I know I've done at least twenty rewrites on each book.

Write. Write. Write. Learn how to revise. No story is perfect straight from the keyboard.

As a very experienced writer once told me, 'It's in the rewrites'.

Writing for me is largely about rewriting.

Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.

In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things.

Rewriting to me means, if I work on it for three days, I've rewritten it.

It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.

I'm a passionate believer in revision, and a lot of my writing gets done during revision process. It isn't just tweaking: I tend to break it apart and remake it every time I do a new draft.

Another thing that's quite different in writing a book as a practicing newspaperman is that if you look at what you've written the next morning and you think you didn't get it quite right, you can fix it.

Keep your hands moving. Writing is rewriting.

I usually do about five drafts per rhyme for each song.

I don't go back and read my own stuff too much, but there are times where I second-guess myself and said I could have done something different, like a line of dialogue.

I do not rewrite unless I am absolutely sure that I can express the material better if I do rewrite it.

The advice I would offer to any writer is that even when you think you have revised your book to the point where you cannot look at it again, it is time to sit down and revise it some more.

Revision is its own reward.