Paul Auster Quotes

When I have a first draft, I have a floor under my feet that I can walk on. And then, especially with the help of the computer, rewriting is so easy to do with the computer, much easier than it used to be with the typewriter. So the books go through numerous drafts.

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.

Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place.

I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft. I can write more quickly than I can read.

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

Writing for me is largely about rewriting.

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.

I think about all my scenes. I do so much revising as I go along; I wonder how I could write books if I hadn't grown up in the computer age. I think I'd be a very different writer. I find myself cutting and pasting, changing things around, and deleting whole paragraphs constantly.

Rewriting to me means, if I work on it for three days, I've rewritten it.

Maybe other writers have perfect first drafts, but I am not one of them. I always try to get the book as tight as I can, but you reach a point as the author where you have lost all perspective.

I revise constantly, as I go along and then again after I've finished a first draft. Few of my novels contain a single sentence that closely resembles the sentence I first set down. I just find that I have to keep zapping and zapping the English language until it starts to behave in some way that vaguely matches my intentions.

I'm a passionate believer in revision, and a lot of my writing gets done during revision process. It isn't just tweaking: I tend to break it apart and remake it every time I do a new draft.

I probably spend 90% of my time revising what I've written.

Most of my early work was done on typewriter. And the only way to iterate drafts was to re-type it.

I am such a rewriter; I have so many notebooks filled with drafts you wouldn't believe.

I think the computer is a hindrance to good writing because it is so tempting to leave what you've written. If you use a typewriter, you must retype if you make a mistake, and thus, you must re-examine every word.

Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.

I hate going back over what I've written. It makes me feel physically sick.

The writing is what gives me the joy, especially editing myself for the page, and getting something ready to show to the editors, and then to have a first draft and get it back and work to fix it, I love reworking, I love editing, love love love revision, revision, revision, revision.

I like revising much, much better than getting down a first draft. The first draft is just getting the pieces to the puzzle. Then I get to put the puzzle together!

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn’t work, throw it away.

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.

I do not rewrite unless I am absolutely sure that I can express the material better if I do rewrite it.

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

Once I start writing, I am a huge reviser. To me writing is revising. I probably turn over every sentence that I write, to see if I have the rhythm right. That's why my first drafts take a really long time.