P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

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 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.

When I have a first draft, I have a floor under my feet that I can walk on. 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.

The outline is 95 percent of the book. Then I sit down and write, and that's the easy part.

After finishing a draft, no matter how rough, I almost always put it aside for a while. It doesn't matter if it's a story or a novel, I find that when it's still fresh in my mind I'm either thoroughly sick of its flaws or completely blind to them. Either way, I'm unable to make substantive edits of any value.

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

When you reach the editing stage, it is often the case that you can get too involved with the story to detect errors. You can see words in your head that aren't actually there on the page, sentences blur together and errors escape you, and you follow plot threads and see only the images in your skull.

I didn't become a good writer until I learned how to rewrite. And I don't just mean fixing spelling and adding a comma. I rewrite each of my books five or six times, and each time I change huge portions of the story.

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 think computers are the ultimate writing tool. I'm a very slow writer, so I appreciate it every day.

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

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.

You know what writers say about their long books: If I had another year, the book would be half as long.

All writers of fiction will at some point find themselves abandoning a piece of work - or find themselves putting it aside, as we gently say.

Generally I finish a first draft in 2-6 months, then I set it aside for a while so that when I come back to it I can read it with fresh eyes and figure out how to improve it.

Although Patterson Beams was not my first plug-in, I knew from the beginning that I would write it, because the single biggest time consuming factor for me was editing each beam manually.

The waste basket is the writer's best friend.

I think I got spoiled and that writing a short story and getting it published, or writing a novel and getting it published, you pretty much get to do the first, second and third draft yourself without a whole lot of interference.

I am a very linear thinker, so I write beginning to end. I write hundreds of pages per book that never make it into print.

Oh, I do a tremendous amount of rewriting. I just obsessively rewrite. Although sometimes there are sections, sometimes you're just lucky and a paragraph will just kind of come out. And that's great. But that's not ordinary in a day's work.

I listen to a lot of different stuff, from Mozart to Johnny Dowd to Monster Magnet. I don't listen to music while I'm writing a draft, but I do listen to it when I'm revising.

When people start writing there is this idea that you have to get everything right first time, every sentence has to be perfect, every paragraph has to be perfect, every chapter has to be perfect, but what you're doing is not any kind of public show, until you're ready for it.

When I'm my own editor, there's very little difference between the first draft and the final. I write what feels right to begin with. I rarely make any major changes.

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.