James Vincent McMorrow Quotes

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.

The best songwriting comes from being as creative as you can and editing it down to the good bits, essentially.

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

When you write - explode - fly apart - disintegrate! Then give time enough to think, cut, rework, and rewrite.

The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.

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

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's true when they say songwriting is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. In truth, what happens is... songs comes through you.

When it comes to lyrics, I just write down a lot of things, and only a very tiny fraction of it, I think, is any good.

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.

Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.

I rewrite my books many times before submitting them, and after my editor takes a look I wind up rewriting some more! It's a good thing I learned at an early age to keep on trying. Stick to it, and eventually you'll get there.

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.

Writing by myself, I spread that out more. I'll spend more time on a song then. I'm more critical about it, because there's no one else in the room to tell me, 'That's really not translating. I'm not getting what you're saying.' So, I'm constantly rewriting it, thinking, 'No, that's fine,' and going back.

Songwriting is kind of like a craft. It's not something that just comes in a dream. You've got to work at it.

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

I got a little bit lost in the writing process: like, that moment in the 'Fight Song' music video where I'm throwing the crumpled paper on the bed, that was really true life. I was filling journals with different possibilities of lyrics for the first verse. And none of them felt right.

We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

I've noticed it a lot. I'm not someone who revises. It's always the first movement, it's that. It's an instinct. Either it works straight away, or it won't ever work.

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

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

When I write something, I constantly rewrite.

Songwriting is a burst of inspiration and then a long bit of work and a tremendous bit of desperation.

I used to write on pads with a pen but had trouble reading the words the next day. Years later, Bob Dylan taught me to just write and write on a laptop computer. Then I'd print that out. When it was time to write a song, I'd go through the pages and sing melodies to words that moved me.