Anita Shreve Quotes

Some people like to purge out a draft and just let it go and then go back and fix it, but I'm a writer-rewriter. I can't move on until I feel like it's presentable.

The whole joy of writing comes from the opportunity to go over it and make it good, one way or another.

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.

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 write slowly. I actually write quickly, but I throw out so much material.

Particularly in my early days, I did very little rewriting.

I can work on a verse for a very long time before realising it's not any good and then, and only then, can I discard it.

First drafts are never any good - at least, mine aren't.

When I write something, I constantly rewrite.

I write a very rough first draft of every chapter, then I rewrite every chapter. I try to get it down in the first rewrite, but some chapters I can't get quite right the third time. There are some I go over and over and over again.

I rewrite a great deal. I'm always fiddling, always changing something. I'll write a few words - then I'll change them. I add. I subtract. I work and fiddle and keep working and fiddling, and I only stop at the deadline.

Most of my success, I feel, comes from being a good editor as opposed to a great writer.

Writing is probably one-fifth coming up with the stuff, and four-fifths self-editing again and again and again.

I haven't had trouble with writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, cliched writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn't have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments.

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 revise obsessively. It's important to me to have a clean page.

Writing is rewriting; rewriting is writing - from the first crossed-out word in the first sentence to the last word inserted above a caret, that most helpful handwritten stroke.

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

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

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

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

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.

But you're not necessarily ever going to be handed a script where you can say: it's all done and perfect.

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.

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.