Facing a bit of paralysis I’ve compile a few quotes to help ignite a passion for editing. Like many writer’s it’s a process I find daunting. In part, I point to my personality. I love the freedom of the first draft and then balk at the discipline required to really polish my writing.
Yet balk no more. I’m 100% committed. As the Bee Gee’s sum up so eloquently: ” It’s only words. And words are all I have to take your breadth away.”
I love Anna Campbell’s sage words too: “First drafts are really tough for me, but I’ve learned to love the revision process, that act of freeing the angel from the marble, as Michelangelo said on the coffee cup I’m currently holding.” ~ Anna Campbell
Here are my most inspiring quotes:
“You will find that by putting your attention on your strengths, how capable you are, the reasons you can accomplish your goals, fear will drop away and the results you desire will begin showing up in your life.” – from The Passion Test
“A rough draft is like bread dough; you need to beat the crap out of it for it to rise.” ~Chris Baty
“Past a certain point, novel planning just becomes another excise to put off novel writing. You will never feel sufficiently ready to jump into your novel, and the more time you spend planning and researching, the more likely you’ll feel pressure to pull off a masterwork that justifies all your prewriting work. Give yourself the gift of a pressure-free novel, and just dive in after one week.” ~Chris Baty
It’s better to write about things you feel than about things you know about.
L. P. Hartley
“To write a lasting and meaningful story, don the hat of a sleuth. In each rewrite, provide another layer of the Thematic Significance of your stories. Your readers may never uncover the deliberate care that went into the formation of every detail of your story. They will be left to ponder the meaning you set forth, possibly even be changed at depth by your story’s theme. The effort is worthy.” ~Martha Alderson
The other thing about writing a novel set in the past is that we live in very busy, distracted lives now, and I have to find a way to take you, my audience, and literally pick you up and time travel you back in the past. I think one of the ways to do that is by giving you a very visceral, powerful, physical beginning. .
And my goodness, if there’s anything that’s going to take you away from the ironing or the latest episode of the soap or your Blackberry or the computer, it’s something that’s powerful land physical, which is why I always like to start these books with something that kind of arrests you and pulls you in.
~ Sarah Dunant
“ I’m a great believer that writers now almost write like cameras. The 19th century when people used all of these words, they were a bit like painters putting lots and lots of tiny brush strokes on the canvas to make up the detail.
I’m almost getting indigestion because I know too much and I get terrified that I’ll never be able to write it, I put the books aside and then I start writing. Strangely, what seems to happen when it’s working is that there’s so much going on in my head, like little satellites all rushing around me, is that when I need it, details start to come in and flow into the story. ~ Sarah Dunant
“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” — Stephen King
“What do I love most? Working with words. Words in a sentence are like pieces of a puzzle… There’s nothing like the moment when, after working and reworking a sentence, everything falls into place, and you know that it’s right.”
~ Barbara Delinsky
“Each word I say is like the stroke of a paintbrush, showing a different colour, a different shade of who a person is.” ~ Andrei Ridgeway, author Psychic Living
“It’s not about what happens to people on a page; it’s about what happens to a reader in his heart and mind.” -Gordon Lish
“A writer is a painter on the page, using words instead of colors. Just as the painter adds a particular touch of color to the canvas for emotional impact, the writer does the same with words. It’s the writer’s duty to evoke emotion on the page, which means that instead of words on your palette, you have emotions–the character’s emotions (anger, fear, joy, confusion, etc.) And the reader’s emotions (curiosity, anticipation, tension, surprise, etc.)” Iglesias
Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start
over. (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
“I edit what I write constantly, and when it’s on paper I can see what corrections I’ve made, whereas on a screen all the messiness of it gets erased so that there’s only the seductively clean words left. I think I edit less when something’s on the computer because of that seductiveness, when editing is usually very much needed. Also, I’ll often make a change and then later change it back – it’s impossible to do that on a computer where your corrections are erased.” ~ Tracey Chevalier
A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. ~ Richard Bach
The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is. ~ August Wilson
Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space. ~ Orson Scott Card
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. ~ Thomas Jefferson.
Good things, when short, are twice as good. ~ Baltasar Gracian
The first draft of anything is shit. ~ Ernest Hemingway
Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them. ~ John Ruskin
You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what’s burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke. ~ Arthur Plotnik
You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences. ~ Anatole France
I try to leave out the parts that people skip. ~ Elmore Leonard
Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. ~ Samuel Johnson
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~ Thomas Mann
Pithy sentences are like sharp nails driving truth into our memory. ~ Diderot
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
I do not like to write — I like to have written. ~ Gloria Steinem
It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. ~ Robert Southey
I just sat down and wrote the story, writing at night and on weekends, primarily to entertain myself ~ Stephanie Laurens
The work was like peeling an onion. The outer skin came off with difficulty… but in no time you’d be down to its innards, tears streaming from your eyes as more and more beautiful reductions became possible. ~ Edward Blishen
There is but one art, to omit.
Robert Louis Stevenson
“First drafts are really tough for me, but I’ve learned to love the revision process, that act of freeing the angel from the marble, as Michelangelo said on the coffee cup I’m currently holding.” ~ Anna Campbell
“Once I have the first draft, I use the editing process to layer and layer and go as deeply as I can.” ~ Anna Campbell
“It’s not how good you are. It’s how good you want to be.” ~ Paul Arden
“It’s only words. And words are all I have to take your breadth away.” ~ The Bee Gees
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act, but a habit.” ~ Aristotle.
Powerful Creativity 