Stephenie Meyer Quotes

Be prepared to fall out of love with your words. I'm still too verbose at times.

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

My first draft is always way too long; my books start out with delusions of 'War and Peace' - and must be gently disabused. My editor is brilliant at taking me to the point where I do all the necessary cutting on my own. I like to say she's a midwife rather than a surgeon.

Anybody who likes writing a book is an idiot. Because it's impossible; it's like having a homework assignment every stinking day until it's done. And by the time you get it in, it's done and you're sitting there reading it, and you realize the 12,000 things you didn't do. I mean, writing isn't fun. It's never been fun.

You know what writers say about their long books: If I had another year, the book would be half as long.

For each detail I include, I throw dozens away. So I guess the first trick is to pick the right details, the most revealing details. Then I think one must simply write quick, clean, bright prose. For me, this means rewriting and rewriting: almost never adding, almost always cutting.

Every time I start a new novel, it seems like an impossible undertaking. If I tried to do too much too quickly, I would get lost and feel overwhelmed. I have to go slow, and give things a chance to take form and grow.

In 'Dark Skye,' I rewrote every one of the Pandemonia scenes over and over before I was happy with them - hundreds of pages are now sitting in a folder called 'Cuttings,' never to be read. Ouch!

Writing is just always hard for me. It always feels like drawing blood. It's never particularly easy.

There's nothing more painful than writing.

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

I don't find writing easy. That is because I do take great care: I rewrite a lot. If anything is sort of clumsy and not possible to read aloud to oneself, which I think one should do... it doesn't work.

I don't like writing - it's so difficult to say what you mean. It's much easier to edit other people's writing and help them say what they mean.

I'm not a fast writer, and I find the process of writing a first draft to be painful and frustrating. Usually, I start with a character, a premise, and some image that gives me a particular feeling.

I write slowly, and I write many, many drafts. I probably have to work as hard as anyone, and maybe harder, to finish a poem. I often write a poem over years, because it takes me a long time to figure out what to say and how best to say it.

It takes me a very, very long time to write a story, to write a piece of fiction, whatever you call the fiction that I write. I just go about it blindly, feeling my way towards what it has to be.

No one writes a great book every time out, or even a good book.

I continue to wish that writing were easier, that it would flow out completely perfect with no need for revisions.

Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing.

The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day's work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.

You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.

There's nothing easy about writing. It's always difficult. It's always a struggle.

Writing is hard - writing is the hardest.

I don't think I'm a natural novelist. Plot is definitely one of my weaker points. I've been working on it a long time, and it's not getting much better.

I'm not a good writer. It takes me a long time to get there. I write and then rewrite and revise and do it over and over until I'm satisfied.