Nia Vardalos Quotes

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.

Everything I write goes through a lot of drafts. A hundred rewrites is not unusual for me to go through - the last fifty maybe just going back and forth on a single line or word selection.

Keep your hands moving. Writing is rewriting.

I have to re-write a lot. I couldn't tell you how many drafts I write, but I know I've done at least twenty rewrites on each book.

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

Writing is rewriting; rewriting is writing - from the first crossed-out word in the first sentence to the last word inserted above a caret, that most helpful handwritten stroke.

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.

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

When I say writing, O believe me, it is rewriting that I have chiefly in mind.

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

Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.

I draft quickly and then revise, a lot.

I don't write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing.

I write everything out in longhand in one fast go. And then I throw out the first few and start over again. By the end of the first draft, the whole thing's messy and disgusting and horrible, but you really understand the foundational stuff.

The one thing you don't want to do is go off and keep rewriting. If something's not quite right, it's often about modulating what's already there.

I think it's almost impossible to edit something to death. I think you can make things better almost indefinitely.

I work on one page, revising and polishing until I can't make it better, then move on to the next. Some pages might get 20 or more drafts before I move on.

Writing is rewriting what you have rewritten.

I write a very rough first draft of every chapter, then I rewrite every chapter. I try to get it down in the first rewrite, but some chapters I can't get quite right the third time. There are some I go over and over and over again.

I write a line and then I revise the line and then I write two lines and then I revise lines one and two and then I write one, two and three and I revise one and two and then I write seven and eight and then I see that should be line four and I continually work it over as I go.

Though I revise constantly as I write, I will usually revise much of the work again after I've reached the ending.

It's never perfect when I write it down the first time, or the second time, or the fifth time. But it always gets better as I go over it and over it.

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.