A Quote by Elif Safak

I write my novels in English first; then they are translated into Turkish by professional translators. Then I take their translation and rewrite. So basically, I write the same novel twice.

Elif Safak

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Basically English First Novel Novels Professional Rewrite Same Take Then Translated Translation Translators Turkish Twice Write

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Elif Safak
Turkish - Novelist
Born: October 25, 1971

Back when the Bible was written, then edited, then rewritten, then rewritten, then re-edited, then translated from dead languages, then re-translated, then edited, then rewritten, then given to kings for them to take their favorite parts, then rewritten, then re-rewritten, then translated again, then given to the pope for him to approve, then rewritten, then edited again, the re-re-re-re-rewritten again...all based on stories that were told orally 30 to 90 years AFTER they happened.. to people who didnt know how to write... so...

David Cross

I tend to write things seven times before I show them to my editor. I write them seven times, then I take them on tour, read them like a dozen times on tour, then go back to the room and rewrite, read and rewrite... I would never show him a first draft, because then he's really going to be sick of it by the twelfth draft.

David Sedaris

There was - there still is - a big shortage of good Chinese-English literary translators. So for two years in London, I was stuck waiting, not writing, with several Chinese books I couldn't get translated. That's when I decided to write in English, since I had been living here and had decided to reconstruct my life here. Even if I wrote in broken English, it was better than getting bored and weary and bitter on the long queue of authors waiting to be translated by a stranger.

Xiaolu Guo

I encourage the translators of my books to take as much license as they feel that they need. This is not quite the heroic gesture it might seem, because I've learned, from working with translators over the years, that the original novel is, in a way, a translation itself.

Michael Cunningham

I'm a morning person because I learned to write my novels while still practicing law. I would get to the office at 6:30 a.m. and write until other people arrived, around 9. Now I still do that. I start at 6:30 or 7, and I'll write until 11, then take an hour off, then work until about 2 p.m. By then my brain has had enough.

Steve Berry

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.

Joyce Carol Oates

Some stories I write in Swedish, some in English. Short stories I've almost exclusively written in English lately, mostly because there's such a small market for them in Sweden and it doesn't really pay either. So, the translation goes both ways. What also factors in is that I have a different voice in English, which means that a straight translation wouldn't be the same as if I'd written it in English originally.

Karin Tidbeck

Usually I will hear a sample, think of a theme and then it will take me a couple of days to write down some lyrics. Then I will decide that I hate those lyrics and rewrite. Then I will change all the music around. Then I will rewrite all the lyrics again. I am a bit of a perfectionist although you would never know it because all my songs are like chopped up and @#$%& up, but you see that's on purpose.

Princess Superstar

When my works are being translated, I always get this question from my translators: Up or down? Which means, should it sound biblical and highbrow, or should we take it all down to sound colloquial? In Hebrew, it's both all the time. People in Israel would write in a high register, they wouldn't write colloquial speech. I do a special take on colloquial speech.

Etgar Keret

Whenever I write my music, it's always been in English first and then I take it into Korean.

Eric Nam

It's a lot to expect of yourself, to write a novel in a year. Anyway, you don't write a novel, you write a scene, and then another scene.

Janet Fitch

I've been told by people who write historical novels that you just sort of write the emotional truth first, the story at the core, and then you go back and research it at the end.

Jami Attenberg

I look at the plotline and let my co-author basically write the book; first draft. Then they give it to me, and I totally destroy it and write all my stuff over it.

Janet Evanovich

If you're going to write, then write a novel with a Haitian woman in it and try and describe her accurately. When you can do that, you can write about people.

Jeff Buckley

I believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try to make it absolutely perfect; or if not that then wonderful. Then you write for who you love whether she can read or write or not and whether she is alive or dead.

Ernest Hemingway

The DNA of the novel - which, if I begin to write nonfiction, I will write about this - is that: the title of the novel is the whole novel. The first line of the novel is the whole novel. The point of view is the whole novel. Every subplot is the whole novel. The verb tense is the whole novel.

Mary Kay Zuravleff

A Quote by Elif Safak

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