Iain Banks Quotes

The best advice on writing was given to me by my first editor, Michael Korda, of Simon and Schuster, while writing my first book. 'Finish your first draft and then we'll talk,' he said. It took me a long time to realize how good the advice was. Even if you write it wrong, write and finish your first draft. Only then, when you have a flawed whole, do you know what you have to fix.

You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

I wrote the first draft of 'Plan B' the summer after I turned 21.

I rewrote the ending of 'Farewell to Arms' 39 times before I was satisfied.

Don't get discouraged because there's a lot of mechanical work to writing. I rewrote the first part of Farewell to Arms at least fifty times.

One, don't wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the end. How do you know how the story should begin until you find out where it's going?

Be willing and unafraid to write badly, because often the bad stuff...forms a base on which to build something better.

I like what I do. Some writers have said in print that they hated writing and it was just a chore and a burden. I certainly don't feel that way about it. Sometimes it's difficult. You know, you always have this image of the perfect thing which you can never achieve, but which you never stop trying to achieve. But I think ... that's your signpost and your guide. You'll never get there, but without it you won't get anywhere.

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something-anything-down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft-you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft-you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.

We all have time to write. We have time to write the minute we are willing to write badly, to chase a dead end, to scribble a few words, to write for the hell of it instead of for the perfect and polished result.

To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again and once more, and over and over.

If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it-bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn't belong there.

Even after you've won fame and fortune, every time you write you've got to write, there's no shortcut, you have to start your career all over again.

When you finally start to write something, do not let yourself stop...even when you are convinced it's the worst garbage ever. This is the biggest caveat for beginning writers. Instead, force yourself to finish what you began, and THEN go back and edit it.

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

Don't get discouraged if you're hammering away at a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter, and it keeps coming out wrong. You're allowed to get it wrong, as many times as you need to; you only need to get it right once.

You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.

Your first attempt will be terrible.... Remember that everything great you see started out as someone else's bad first draft..... Whenever someone sends me a manuscript and says, 'It just flowed out of me,' I usually think: Let it flow back into you for a while.

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.

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page a day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

Trust your imagination. Don't be afraid to fail. Write. Revise. Revise. Revise.

It takes writing a billion bad words before you get to the good ones.

Editing while you're writing is like strangling the baby in the crib.

It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and then write it sentence by sentence - no first draft. I can't write five words but that I change seven.