Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

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.

I am usually protective of my work, not showing it to anyone until it has been redrafted and polished.

There are days when the result is so bad that no fewer than five revisions are required. In contrast, when I'm greatly inspired, only four revisions are needed.

Seventy percent of a first draft is garbage and 30 percent is gold, but you have to write 100 percent to get that 30.

I don't spend the day writing. I'll maybe write fresh copy for two hours, and then I'll go back and revise some of it and print what I like and then turn it off.

Writing is probably one-fifth coming up with the stuff, and four-fifths self-editing again and again and again.

Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever.

Sometimes I write less than I'd like but do research. Other times, editor's notes or a copy-edited manuscript or page proofs for a forthcoming novel mean that I need to put my attentions elsewhere for a day or two, but I always come back to writing.

I write 1,000-1,500 words. The next day, I rewrite it and add 1,000-1,500 words to the end of it.

I write a chapter, then edit it and edit it and edit it and edit it. I don't think we mine creativity from within. It's bestowed from on high, from God.

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.

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.

I revise obsessively. It's important to me to have a clean page.

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

I try to write 1,000 words. Some people say it's not about the quantity but about the quality. I disagree. You need to write a lot in order to figure out what's good and what's crap.

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.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

I'm really happy to have the chance to talk about the editing process. It's something that I think doesn't get the weight it deserves, especially with the rise of self-publishing.

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

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.

If you write 50 songs, you're bound to write at least a dozen good ones.

My toughest criticism usually comes from myself. As my editor can attest to, I'm never done tweaking a book until the production department has to rip it from my hands!

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 always want to make sure the book I'm writing is the best book I can deliver.

I don't publish anything I haven't worked over 100 times.