James Laughlin 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.

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

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.

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

Most of my success, I feel, comes from being a good editor as opposed to a great writer.

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.

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

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

Write how you want, the critic shall show the world you could have written better.

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.

I try and get it right the first time. I may rewrite a sentence four or five times, but I rarely go back and kill a whole page and rewrite it.

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

First drafts are never any good - at least, mine aren't.

The thing I love about making movies is the peace of mind that I know I don't have to be perfect the first time. I can be perfect the second time or the third time.

There are many, many things in my work that need redoing - never the structure.

No book I publish will be perfect, but I need to feel I've taken it as far as I can.

Seeing the first edit is the worst.

If a teacher told me to revise, I thought that meant my writing was a broken-down car that needed to go to the repair shop. I felt insulted. I didn't realize the teacher was saying, 'Make it shine. It's worth it.' Now I see revision as a beautiful word of hope. It's a new vision of something. It means you don't have to be perfect the first time. What a relief!

The advice I would offer to any writer is that even when you think you have revised your book to the point where you cannot look at it again, it is time to sit down and revise it some more.

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.

Writers need to be tough. This is not for the weak of will. And we have to realize that, yeah, it's never good enough. It's not like fixing a car where it's precise and we know what the end result will be definitively.

I should mention something that nobody ever thinks about, but proofreading takes a lot of time. After you write something, there are these proofs that keep coming, and there's this panicky feeling that 'This is me and I must make it better.'

I always market research my books before I hand them in by showing them to five or six close friends who I trust to be honest with me, so they are very heavily re-written already.