There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting. — Robert Graves
A good writer is not someone who knows how to write- but how to rewrite — William Goldman
I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter. — James A. Michener
Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying. — John Updike
Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it. — Michael Crichton
Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn’t work, throw it away. — Helen Dunmore
Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. — Stephen King
Architecture is like writing. You have to edit it over and over so it looks effortless — Zaha Hadid
Editing feels almost like sculpting or a form of continuing the writing process. — Sydney Pollack
Dreaming and hoping won't produce a piece of work; only writing, rewriting and rewriting (if necessary)- a devoted translation of thoughts and dreams into words on paper will result in a story. — Roberta Gellis
When you write ,it's like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring then unity. — Edwidge Danticat
As you continue writing and rewriting, you begin to see possibilities you hadn't seen before. Writing a poem is always a process of discovery. — Robert Hayden
Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms. — Angela Carter
Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination. — Louise Brooks
Short Rewrites Quotes
The moment you change your perception is the moment you rewrite the chemistry of your body. — Bruce H. Lipton
I can’t write five words but that I change seven. — Dorothy Parker
Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts. — Larry L. King
I rewrote the ending of 'Farewell to Arms' 39 times before I was satisfied. — Ernest Hemingway
He who controls the past controls the future. — Lao Tzu
When rewriting, move quickly. It's a little like cutting your own hair. — Robert Stone
Don't document bad code - rewrite it. — Brian Kernighan
I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber. — David McCullough
When I say writing, O believe me, it is rewriting that I have chiefly in mind. — Robert Louis Stevenson
Rewriting is like scrubbing the basement floor with a toothbrush. — Peter Murphy
Writing And Rewriting Quotes
Writing a first draft is like groping one's way into a dark room, or overhearing a faint conversation, or telling a joke whose punchline you've forgotten. As someone said, one writes mainly to rewrite, for rewriting and revising are how one's mind comes to inhabit the material fully. — Ted Solotaroff
I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters. — James A. Michener
Rewriting is when writing really gets to be fun. . . . In baseball you only get three swings and you're out. In rewriting, you get almost as many swings as you want and you know, sooner or later, you'll hit the ball. — Neil Simon
I think we're always in the process of writing and rewriting the story of our lives, forming our experiences into a narrative that makes sense. Much of that work involves demythologizing family myths and cultural myths - getting free of what we have been told about ourselves. — Sam Keen
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. — Robert Stone
My writing is a process of rewriting, of going back and changing and filling in. in the rewriting process you discover what's going on, and you go back and bring it up to that point. — Joan Didion
Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It's a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need. — Helen Dunmore
Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. — John Steinbeck
I can't understand how anyone can write without rewriting everything over and over again. — Leo Tolstoy
Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original, if not profound. — John Gardner
Rewriting Your Story Quotes
When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done. — Stephen King
Share your story with someone. You never know how one sentence of your life story could inspire someone to rewrite their own. — Demi Lovato
Heinlein's Rules for Writers Rule One: You Must Write Rule Two: Finish What Your Start Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order Rule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the Market Rule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold — Robert A. Heinlein
When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story. — Stephen King
Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it. — Stephen King
Writing Education Quotes
Writing graffiti is about the most honest way you can be an artist. It takes no money to do it, you don't need an education to understand it, and there's no admission fee. — Banksy
Education is not simply to learn to read and write. It's emancipation. It makes you free. — Ziauddin Yousafzai
If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing Double Dahlias in his garden. — David W. Wolfe
Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods. — Neil Postman
If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write. — Martin Luther
Good English, well spoken and well written will open more doors than a college degree... Bad English will slam doors you don't even know exist. — William Raspberry
you don't have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great. — Les Brown
Good education means learning to read, write and most importantly learn how to learn so that you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up. — Patty Murray
All the youth now in England of free men, who are rich enough to be able to devote themselves to it, be set to learn as long as they are not fit for any other occupation, until they are able to read English writing well. — Alfred the Great
In terms of brain development, musical performance is every bit as important educationally as reading or writing. — Oliver Sacks
Rewriting History Quotes
The social disease of political correctness has entered daily life, inverting good to bad and attempting to rewrite proud histories as an imposition of white supremacy for which we all should make contrition. — Robert Agostinelli
The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history. — Oscar Wilde
Part of the approach envisaged in bringing about Black Consciousness has to be directed to the past, to seek to rewrite the history of the black man and to produce in it the heroes who form the core of the African background — Steven Biko
We're here to make a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why even be here? We're creating a completely new consciousness, like an artist or a poet. That’s how you have to think of this. We're rewriting the history of human thought with what we're doing. — Steve Jobs
Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them. — George W. Bush
That's human nature - we want to completely rewrite history so it can be comfortable. Without getting too profound, I'm pretty sure that's where the invention of the afterlife comes from. "We don't really become worm food. We go to a magical place with bunnies and rainbows." — Bobcat Goldthwait
That is what we have in revisionist historians. It starts with their own atheism, their own unbelief, and then they go back and attempt to revise and rewrite history in their own image. — D. James Kennedy
History is the torch that is meant to illuminate the past, to guard us against the repetition of our mistakes of other days. We cannot join in the rewriting of history to make it conform to our comfort and convenience. — Claude Bowers
Hillary has already gotten a record $8 million advance from Simon & Schuster for the book -- reportedly the most anyone has ever received for rewriting history. — Ann Coulter
Should we be rewriting history just to make people feel good? That's not history, that's psychiatry. — Ed Koch
Something is wrong if workers do not look around each day, find things that are tedious or boring, and then rewrite the procedures. Even last month's manual should be out of date — Taiichi Ohno
Every great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes. — John Podhoretz
Fandom, after all, is born of a balance between fascination and frustration: if media content didn't fascinate us, there would be no desire to engage with it; but if it didn't frustrate us on some level, there would be no drive to rewrite or remake it. — Henry Jenkins
Markets are useful instruments for organizing productive activity. But unless we want to let the market rewrite the norms that govern social institutions, we need a public debate about the moral limits of markets. — Michael Sandel
The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be decided according to the terms of the Constitution itself, and not according to judges views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice. I have no fear of constitutional amendments properly adopted, but I do fear the rewriting of the Constitution by judges under the guise of interpretation. — Hugo Black
A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules. — Leonardo DiCaprio
According to the best research, less than 3% of Americans have written goals, and less than 1% review and rewrite their goals on a daily basis. — Brian Tracy
It's taken years for me to understand that dying doesn't end the story; it transforms it. Edits, rewrites, the blur, aand epiphany of one-way dialogue. Most of us wander in and out of one another's lives until not death, but distance, does us part-- time and space and heart's weariness are the blander executioners or human connection. — Gail Caldwell
I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers. — Vladimir Nabokov
Men have jobs, while women have Roles: Mother, Wife, Goddess, Temptress, etc. That's probably why it's so hard for women to rewrite the rules. You're not just changing a job description, but an ancient myth. You're revising the Bible, Poetry, Legend and Psychoanalytic Scripture. — Caryl Rivers
The problem is once you've written the opening paragraph and worked out how the rest of the story will go in your head, there's nothing in it for you. I write in longhand using disposable fountain pens on the right-hand side of the notebook for the first draft, then I rewrite some of the sentences and paragraphs on the left-hand side. — Colm Toibin
I don't impose any word count or number-of-hours quota on myself, or have any rules, except one: persistence. Nothing glamorous. No epiphanies. Just revisiting and rewriting. For me, momentum is far more important than inspiration. — Pam Muñoz Ryan
All along, you've been shaping your destiny unconsciously. But you can also work on it consciously. If you make the effort to access your core and realise that everything is your responsibility, and shift your focus inside you, then you can rewrite your destiny. — Jaggi Vasudev
A lot of actors get concerned about their own image, even going so far as to rewrite a movie to best serve that image. All I want to do is be in good movies. — Michael Douglas
To this day, I get rewrite offers where they say: 'We feel this script needs work with character, dialogue, plot and tone,' and when you ask what's left, they say: 'Well, the typing is very good.' — John Sayles
If I wanted to make a quick buck, there's far easier ways of doing it. What I want is to provoke people. If you want a hit song, all you need to do is rewrite an old song. It might have been proven to work, but you won't be remembered the same way. — Avicii
Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with the first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing. — Richard North Patterson
In Conclusion
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