David McCullough Quotes

Anyone who tells you they don't need to rewrite, they're usually the ones who need it worst.

I'm a fairly fast, but sloppy writer, so I'm a big fan of re-writing, and re-writing again.

Writing for me is largely about rewriting.

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

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

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

Good writing is essentially rewriting.

Rewriting is a large part of the whole job. And get rid of stuff that's not working. Just pare it down until it's a beautiful thing you can hand in, probably late, to your editor.

Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it.

Editing is more by-the-hip. You look at a text and ask yourself how it can be improved.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.

Once you've finished typing and moving text around and everything else, you have to leave it alone for a while. You do that to see if it stands up, to see if all the loose edges have been trimmed, if it makes sense, if it's consistent, what shape it really has. You can't tell that while you're working on it.

Screenwriting is like ironing. You move forward a little bit and go back and smooth things out.

Good writing is good writing, but that doesn't mean you can't orchestrate it or tweak it.

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

A good novel editor is invisible.

When I write something, I constantly rewrite.

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.

When I write, I feel like an optometrist, constantly flipping between lenses and asking, 'Is this better? Is this?' Slowly, the work comes into focus.