A Quote by David McCullough
I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber.
Related Quotes
Good writing is writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. Sometimes, it happens to work right away, and that's amazing. But most of the time, it happens to work, and then you rewrite and rewrite and rewrite, and maybe it even comes back to the thing it was in the first place, but then you know for sure that it is good, and it's what you wanted to do.
Writing is rewriting; rewriting is writing - from the first crossed-out word in the first sentence to the last word inserted above a caret, that most helpful handwritten stroke.
My records have a lot of collaborators on them, and when you're writing a book, it's a very insular process that's very confusing and dark. It's a lot of writing and rewriting in a way that I don't do so much when I'm writing songs.
[Writing is] largely a matter of application and hard work, or writing and rewriting endlessly until you are satisfied that you have said what you want to say as clearly and simply as possible. For me that usually means many, many revisions.
So much of the effort that goes into writing prose for me is about making sentences that capture the music that I'm hearing in my head. It takes a lot of work, writing, writing, and rewriting to get the music exactly the way you want it to be.
Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things that people do
I get ill when I'm writing because I'm so focused on it, and it can take a year or two. Often, I knock out the first draft very quickly. I can do it in five to six weeks. Then, it takes a year of rewriting it and rewriting it.
Nobody told all the new e-mail writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they are writing with ease and enjoyment doesn't mean they are writing well.
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.
There is very little that is accidental in my work. I believe in serendipity for developments of plot, but the actual writing is arrived at by very hard work. The joy of writing doesn't mean that you don't get the backaches and headaches and the days when it's not coming.
I studied philosophy, religious studies, and English. My training was writing four full-length novels and hiring an editor to tear them apart. I had enough money to do that, and then rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.
My books are based on the "what if" principle. "What if you became invisible?" or "What if you did change into your mother for one day?" I then take it from there. Each book takes several months in the long process of writing, rewriting, writing, rewriting, and each has its own set of problems. The one thing I dislike about the writing process is the sometimes-loneliness of it all. Readers only get to see the glamour part of a bound book, not some of the agonizing moments one has while constructing it.
If you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you're writing. And if this lack of motivation is a constant problem, perhaps writing is not your forte. I mean, what is the problem? If writing bores you, that is pretty fatal. If that is not the case, but you find that it is hard going and it just doesn't flow, well, what did you expect? It is work; art is work.
Writing is hard work, not magic. It begins with deciding why you are writing and whom you are writing for. What is your intent? What do you want the reader to get out of it? What do you want to get out of it. It's also about making a serious time commitment and getting the project done.
Writing, for me, when I'm writing in the first-person, is like a form of acting. So as I'm writing, the character or self I'm writing about and my whole self - when I began the book - become entwined. It's soon hard to tell them apart. The voice I'm trying to explore directs my own perceptions and thoughts.
I have a hard time writing. Most writers have a hard time writing. I have a harder time than most because I'm lazier than most. [...] The other problem I have is fear of writing. The act of writing puts you in confrontation with yourself, which is why I think writers assiduously avoid writing. [...] Not writing is more of a psychological problem than a writing problem. All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. [...] It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. Especially when it goes on for years. It's much more relaxing actually to work.
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