A Quote by Pearl S. Buck

If you start to revise before you've reached the end, you're likely to begin dawdling with the revisions and putting off the difficult task of writing.

Pearl S. Buck

Quote Topics

Before Begin Difficult Difficult Task End Likely Off Putting Reached Revise Start Task Writing

Quote Author

Pearl S. Buck
American - Novelist
June 26, 1892 - March 6, 1973

I revise and revise and revise. I'm not even sure "revise" is the right word. I work a story almost to death before it's done.

Peter Orner

Plotting is difficult for me, and always has been. I do that before I actually start writing, but I always do characters, and the arc of the story, first... You can't do anything without a story arc. Where is it going to begin, where will it end.

Elizabeth George

I've thought about writing, but it hasn't happened yet. It's like schoolwork - you start doing your revisions two nights before you're compelled to turn it in.

Matthew Goode

I love revisions...We can't go back and revise our lives, but being allowed to go back and revise what we have written comes closest.

Katherine Paterson

Though I revise constantly as I write, I will usually revise much of the work again after I've reached the ending.

Joyce Carol Oates

The ways in which a standardized language test induces storytelling, for example, is the opposite of creative writing; you have to learn a logical way to start a story, whereas in creative writing you may begin at the end or begin at the middle of the story.

Alejandro Zambra

The only analogy I have before me is Socrates. My task is a Socratic task, to revise the definition of what it is to be a Christian. For my part I do not call myself a "Christian" (thus keeping the ideal free), but I am able to make it evident that the others are still less than I.

Soren Kierkegaard

Sometimes I'll have an end in mind, but it's always false, always corny, just a dumb idea anyone could have, sitting on a barstool. An abstract thesis with no real life inside it. And then I start writing and the writing itself confounds me, taking away the comfort of knowing the end in advance. How is that even possible? Doesn't the conclusion come at the end? How can you begin with one - that seems odd, right?

Charles D'Ambrosio

I think kids abandon stories all the time. They start stories and get frustrated or get a different, better idea. I think that it is more worthwhile to stick with a story and revise it and try to finish it than abandon ship. Revisions, for any writer, are the name of the game.

Gail Carson Levine

It's easier to revise lousy writing than to revise a blank sheet of paper.

S.A. Bodeen

That said, in the two weeks before I leave for the Dark Days tour, I am going radio silent, which means I will be avoiding the Internet at all costs in order to revise, revise, revise. I will miss you. Tris says hi, though.

Veronica Roth

Many people think that it is important to have a title before you begin writing the book, but I think you should never sit around waiting for the right title to strike before you start writing. Crack on with the story, put in the hard work, and the title will come eventually.

Darren Shan

In my own work, I usually revise through forty or fifty drafts of a poem before I begin to feel content with it.

Mary Oliver

We know that people are less open in conversations if the other conversant puts a cell phone on the table. Even if it's turned off. The sign is enough to close the mind and make a prospective client or lover less likely to do what you ask. As people realize this, they'll start putting away phones or turning them off.