Elinor Lipman Quotes

I try to write everyday. I do that much better over here than when I'm teaching. I always rewrite, usually fairly close-on which is to say first draft, then put it aside for 24 hours then more drafts.

If things are going well I can easily spend twelve hours a day writing, but not writing writing, just thinking and revising and taking a comma out and putting it back in.

My personal opinion is that, if you're a professional writer, that you do have quotas. So every day I do try to write 800-1,200 words. I don't always achieve it, and the reality is that a lot of the words I write will end up on the cutting-room floor.

I never leave a sentence or a paragraph until I'm satisfied with it.

When I write a book, I'm making it the best book I can.

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

I write an actual script rather quickly - a draft will take me two weeks - but I write a lot of drafts. My big thing is I don't re-read. When I write, I never re-read back. I'll send it, because if I re-read back, it will cripple me.

I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning.

It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and then write it sentence by sentence - no first draft. I can't write five words but that I change seven.

I try very hard to write the best book I possibly can, every time.

One of the agonies of being an author is to know when to stop writing.

I write in a journal first, briefly. Then read something I've read many times before, for about half an hour, then rework what I wrote the day before.

Write every day, just to keep in the habit, and remember that whatever you have written is neither as good nor as bad as you think it is. Just keep going, and tell yourself that you will fix it later.

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.

Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever.

Sometimes I write less than I'd like but do research. Other times, editor's notes or a copy-edited manuscript or page proofs for a forthcoming novel mean that I need to put my attentions elsewhere for a day or two, but I always come back to writing.

If you get a sense that your writing isn't quite working, change it. Or cut it out. Don't just tell yourself it'll do, because it won't.

I've never been a believer in the word-count thing. I write slowly and tinker with the words and the word order, and I throw a lot of stuff out.

I write a thousand words a day.

I try to write 1,000 words. Some people say it's not about the quantity but about the quality. I disagree. You need to write a lot in order to figure out what's good and what's crap.

Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.

Three hundred words in a day is not a lot. So much of it is thinking before writing. And then there's the cutting. But you do what you do and keep moving forward.

I have like 250 letters that I have to whittle it down to 150. Only then do you have the whole overview of a book. When it was finally edited, at least my take was, everybody's lying. You know?

Write a million words before thinking about getting published.

I am usually protective of my work, not showing it to anyone until it has been redrafted and polished.