October 5, 2020

famous writers on revision article


The week’s best writing, plus famous authors on revisions, writing in the morning, and new colors for a new year (in case you’re redoing a blog).

I was pleased to hear lately that Rousseau, too, after he got up in the morning, went for a short walk and sat down to work. You try to liberate it. Why does it always stop when the work in question has been reduced to sixty or seventy thousand words — entirely coincidentally, I’m sure, the minimum length for a publishable novel?

It serves as a group portrait of Spanish royalty, but it's also a self-portrait of Velázquez himself at work (on the left). Recent Times features, including a new series on the art of writing, inspire us to create this list of 10 “rules” for writing well. Get inspired after the jump, and tell us your own revision mantra in the comments. 1, “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” — Elmore Leonard, “It is the beginning of a work that the writer throws away. They discuss failing to finish a manuscript, failing to find a publisher, badly realised characters and tortuous, unwieldy plots. Some of these quotations are about editorial comments; others about that excruciating process we all go through of trying to find more time to write less. The most famous work by renowned artist Michelangelo covers a section of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling -- you have to look up to view it. Then comes the warm part: when you already have something to work with, upgrade, edit… Let’s say it’s a mess. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 as Needed.” New York Times, The Paris Review: The Art of Nonfiction No.

Here are five more famous paintings that came close to breaking into the top 10 list: Victor Fraile Rodriguez/Corbis/Getty Images, Omar Marques/Anadolu Agency/Getty Imagesges. The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, and very mysterious.’ *(or rather, the character of Mrs Hawkins in A Far Cry from Kensington. Leo Tolstoy and HP Lovecraft – pick the hours that work best for youTolstoy believed in starting first thing: “I always write in the morning. Readers won’t mind!” — Nick Hornby, The Polysyllabic Spree, “By the time I am nearing the end of a story, the first part will have been reread and altered and corrected at least one hundred and fifty times. It is available from the Guardian bookshop for £12.75, including free UK p&p. 'I Urge You to Drop E67-02': Course Syllabi by Famous Authors.

Twaddle it was too. Besides the stylistic differences, technically "Girl With a Pearl Earring" isn't even a portrait. Should I just take that away? Then I make more corrections.

Go on, young writers — treat yourself to a joke, or an adverb! The painting has that distinctive Picasso style, and its unflinching examination of the horrors of war made it an essential part of 20th century culture and history. You read the sentences over and over. It seems to me that the more we read … Hemingway, on the other hand, notoriously said that the first draft of anything is terrible (he used a less innocuous word).

Because I can see the work of her hand, I feel that I can better understand her thinking process, which often leads me to the best kind of revisions. (It’s also why people who work in advertising put in twenty-hour days.) So take heart! I have to find what those are and build from them and throw out what doesn’t work, or what simply is not alive.” — Susan Sontag, “I’m all for the scissors. The scene depicts God and Adam with outstretched arms, their fingers nearly touching. As the statue is entombed in the block of marble, the novel is inside your head.

There was a time when I made a number of handwritten drafts.

Here are a just few of our favourite tips, which we believe any aspiring writer should take to heart.

But then every once in a while I feel the need to go to page one again and start rewriting. If there are things you aren’t satisfied with as a reader, go in and fix them as a writer: that’s revision.” — Neil Gaiman, “When I’m working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. If it is good, you’ll find out. In the morning one’s head is particularly fresh. Too often students see revision as a boring chore that stands between them and their word processor with its colored fonts, fancy graphics and rainbow-tinted paper (Smede, 2000). All rights reserved. . The painting does double duty as a portrait.

), Available for everyone, funded by readers. You want to winch the book out of your balky mind. Finish the short story, print it out, then put it in a drawer and write other things. Zadie Smith – get offline“Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.”, 10.

And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.” — Anne Lamott in Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on the Writing Life, “You could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the part you omitted would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.” — Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast, “And though the rewriting — and the rereading — sound like effort, they are actually the most pleasurable parts of writing. The painting's striking blues and yellows and the dreamy, swirling atmosphere have intrigued art lovers, Papers bring Van Gogh's time in London to life.

I would say I cross out more than I write. The second draft is the up draft – you fix it up. July 19, 2016.

That phrase became a famous line in the Elvis Presley hit “Heartbreak Hotel.” In the first draft, we see these lines: Words are crossed out on the manuscript, others are added, giving us: I love those revisions.

Interviewer: Was there some technical problem there? From there, it was comparatively easy. It helps.”, 7. You need not watch the cat all the time. But it has also occurred to me that if Shelley were writing today using a computer, his remarkable revision would probably be lost forever.

After posting up some of the rejection letters that famous authors received, I thought it would be interesting to see what they had to say about the revisions process. Once I get over maybe a hundred pages, I won’t go back to page one, but I might go back to page fifty-five, or twenty, even. Leonardo, the original "Renaissance Man," is the only artist to appear on this list twice. ( Log Out /  Murder your darlings.” — Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, On the Art of Writing, 1916, “I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published.

Muriel Spark* – get a cat“If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially on some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Haven’t you ever heard the phrase; the writing is in the rewriting? Now, after the first draft, written by hand and completely scrawled over, I start typing it out, deciphering as I go.

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