John Dunne Quotes

I rewrote the ending to 'Farewell to Arms,' the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.

If I had to write a rough draft, all the way through and then go back and start over, I probably would just stop writing. I wouldn't find that interesting. I would feel that I had committed so many things to the paper that I couldn't easily undo because one thing leads to the next, the interconnectedness, the sequences would make it very hard to change something that simply didn't work.

I want to wake up one morning and know how to write page one, or page 10, or page 250. But I never seem to know how to do it. Every book is different and takes a different structure, style, process, etc. And relearning how to write is where the insanity comes from.

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer.

It's always the paragraphs I loved most, the ones I tenderly polished and re-read with pride, that my editor will suggest cutting.

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 always strikes me how almost unbelievably bad are the early versions of my novels.

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

If I've written five pages by hand, out of those five pages, one page might be worth saving. The rest is crap. I have to throw it away. It's like I need eight hours to do two hours' work.

Once I get over maybe a hundred pages, I won't go back to page one, but I might go back to page fifty-five, or twenty, even. But then every once in a while I feel the need to go to page one again and start rewriting.

I don't find writing easy. That is because I do take great care; I rewrite a lot.

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.

For me, most writing consists of siphoning out useless pre-story matter, cutting and cutting and cutting, what seems to be endless rewriting, and what is entailed in all that is patience, and waiting, and false starts, and dead ends, and really, in a way, nerve.

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.

When I'm working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day I go back to page one and just retype what I have. It gets me into a rhythm.

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.

Every published writer suffers through that first draft because most of the time, that's a disappointment.

Writing is hard, hard work; that's just the way it is.

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!

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.

I spent the entire morning inserting a comma; I spent the whole afternoon removing it again.

Every first draft sucks, so when you have your favorite novel, and you're like, 'Wow, this is a masterpiece,' and then you write your first draft, and you're like, 'This is really bad,' and then you're like 'I can't do this because this is nowhere close.' When, in reality, the book you loved so much started out just as crappy.

Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.

I rewrote the ending of 'Farewell to Arms' 39 times before I was satisfied.