Michael Cunningham Quotes

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

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.

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

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

Writing for me is largely about rewriting.

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.

Keep your hands moving. Writing is rewriting.

Writing is rewriting what you have rewritten.

I think the hardest part of writing is revising. And by that I mean the following: A novelist has to create the piece of marble and then chip away to find the figure in it.

Finding pleasure in revision is the thing I would most strongly advise to people. It's not something I did as a younger writer; I learned it over time.

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.

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

Once I've got the first draft down on paper then I do five or six more drafts, the last two of which will be polishing drafts. The ones in between will flesh out the characters and maybe I'll check my research.

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.

When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I complete that novel I return to the earlier novel and rewrite much of it. In the meantime the second novel lies in a desk drawer.

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.

Maybe other writers have perfect first drafts, but I am not one of them. I always try to get the book as tight as I can, but you reach a point as the author where you have lost all perspective.

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.

When I write something, I constantly rewrite.

You should always go through the first draft of a book all at once, I think, to get the best results. You can take time off after the first draft and come back to it fresh.

Though I revise constantly as I write, I will usually revise much of the work again after I've reached the ending.