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. But then every once in a while I feel the need to go to page one again and start rewriting.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.
I revise obsessively. It's important to me to have a clean page.
If I've written five pages by hand, out of those five pages, one page might be worth saving. The rest is crap. I have to throw it away. It's like I need eight hours to do two hours' work.
When I write a book, I write very cleanly from page one to the last page. I hardly ever write out of sequence.
For all I know, I am beginning with the ending. My page one can wind up a year later as page two hundred, if it's still even around.
When I write something, I constantly rewrite.
Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place.
I actually feel, when I get to about page 200, that it's going to be a book after all! It never gets easier - when you conquer one problem, another one rises up to take its place.
I don't do rewrites. I put all the pages in a pile next to the typewriter.
I did a complete rewrite of 650 pages in two weeks.