John Updike Quotes

I read what I write over and over and make corrections and improvements, until I reach the conclusion that the material deserves to stand on its own.

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.

If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.

My self-editing process is intense.

I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You're grateful for these different chances.

And the most important thing you can do is learn to edit yourself. And then go back and rewrite.

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

I edit as I write. I revise endlessly. I don't go forward until I know that what I've written is as good as I can make it.

I'm pretty rigorous about the drafts I turn in. I don't turn in something that's so ungodly they go, 'What the hell is this?'

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.

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.

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

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

Often something comes in from which you can see that the person is good, the book may not be perfect as it is, and the person doesn't want to do a re-write. That's something we do almost nothing of.

To be honest, I rewrote 'Wicked Nights' a number of times. I just wasn't happy with the end result.

I write and rewrite and rewrite and write and like to turn in what I think is finished work.

The life of an editor is not a glamorous one. You're a fixer; you make things better.

I write the paragraph, then I'm crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then I type it up because sometimes it's almost illegible, and if I wait, I might not be able to read it the next day.

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

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

I love arranging the words and having them fall on the ear the right way, and you know you're not quite there, and you're redoing it and redoing it, and there's a wonderful thrill to it. But it is hard. It's a job of tremendous anxiety for me.

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

I draft quickly and then revise, a lot.

I very seldom read back into what I've written.

Each one of the films get built up and strengthened and reinforced, and we're not afraid to rip stuff out and redo it until we feel it's worthy of the 'Pixar' name.