Michael Morpurgo Quotes

There are things you do when you're writing that are so fun to do it's almost like they're private jokes that are amusing to you but no one else is going to enjoy them nearly as much and you worry you're going to have to take them out in the end.

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

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.

I feel sorry for people who have to edit me. Which is why book writing is by far the most enjoyable. Really the only thing it's based on is whether it's good or not. No book editor, in my experience, is getting a manuscript and try to rewrite it.

This is not a screenplay. I don't do twenty drafts. I'm not going to show this to you until it's published or accepted for publication. You can make whatever suggestions you want, but I probably will ignore them entirely.

And the most important thing you can do is learn to edit yourself. And then go back and rewrite.

If every editor turns you down, maybe you should take a second look at your text, however, just in case.

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.

Accepting that part of the process of writing is deleting a lot of what you write is soothing, at least to me.

I see myself as a first-draft writer, so when I sit down to write something, the first draft is usually pretty close to the end draft.

I've learned to really love revision over the years and worked hard to build up my craft muscle to make my revisions less and less painful with each book.

Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.

Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.

The first Chapter Law is, "Don't spend much time on it. You're going to have to rewrite it."

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.

The writer’s life is a life of revisions.

Revision is its own reward.

I write a book at least three times-once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.

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

The best advice I can give on this is, once it's done, to put it away until you can read it with new eyes. Finish the short story, print it out, then put it in a drawer and write other things. When you're ready, pick it up and read it, as if you've never read it before. If there are things you aren't satisfied with as a reader, go in and fix them as a writer: that's revision.

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 can't understand how anyone can write without rewriting everything over and over again.

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

Only when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite.

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