Scott Foley Quotes

When you're in the editing process, you try different things and you get creative ideas.

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.

Five hundred words a day is what I aim for. And I don't go on to the next chapter until I've polished and polished and polished the one I'm working on.

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

I can get really obsessive. I like writing many drafts, and I try not to because it is very time-consuming, especially when you're working on a novel. But I do like to take a story and reorder it, put things in different places. This allows me to see things in a new and sometimes surprising way.

I'm a really a fanatical reviser, and there comes a point where I have to declare a truce with the text, or I'll keep fooling with it forever.

Once I'm in the editing room, forget about what I intended to shoot. I take a cold, hard look at what I really did shoot, and then I edit that because, if you try to edit what you intended and you missed somewhere, that will show up.

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.

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer.

To me, writing is the most fun. It's not always fun, but finally when you make it come out the way you want, it's then you can say, 'It's fun, boy.'

I love the idea that the editing room is the final time you write. You should still be creatively solving problems even at that point. It's not really until you're locked that you can call it quits.

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

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 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.

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.

Eventually the bad stuff I'm writing turns into better stuff. Other times, I've just walked away from what I was working on, and figured I'd have a better perspective when I came back to it.

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.

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

I've never been a believer in the word-count thing. I write slowly and tinker with the words and the word order, and I throw a lot of stuff out.

For me, the hardest thing in the world is how to start a book.

I always rewrite the very beginning of a novel. I rewrite the beginning as I write the ending, so I may spend part of morning writing the ending, the last 100 pages approximately, and then part of the morning revising the beginning. So the style of the novel has a consistency.

To tell you the truth, I don't edit much at all. Most times, when I have finished the first draft, that's the book. Of course, I work on the page I am on until I am happy with it. I might even say that I try to state the landscape.

I don't do rewrites. I put all the pages in a pile next to the typewriter.

I am never really surprised at the way my books take shape. They are just not as perfect as I'd like them to be.

People might be surprised to know how much I throw away. For every page I publish, I throw 10 pages away.