Michelle Paver Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

When I write something, I constantly rewrite.

You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.

You have to be willing to throw [writing] stuff away and replace it.

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

Instead of a dedicated room, my best trigger is the actual habit of reading over the texts from the day before. Marking. Changing. Fussing. This ritual amounts to a habit of trust. Trust that I can make it better. That if I keep trying, I will come closer to something true.

Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Although every writer dreams of getting it right on the first pass, very few succeed.

Songwriting is like editing. You write down all this stuff - all this bad, stupid stuff - and then you have to get rid of everything except the very best.

You always want to go out there with the best book possible, so I listen to what my editors say, and even if they don't know how to fix it, I always seem to find a way. 'Trust Your Eyes' is the best book I've written, and I don't know if I can do any better.

I'm not suggesting that the play is without fault; all of my plays are imperfect, I'm rather happy to say-it leaves me something to do.

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.