Quote

Finding pleasure in revision is the thing I would most strongly advise to people. It's not something I did as a younger writer; I learned it over time.

Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.

I'm a passionate believer in revision, and a lot of my writing gets done during revision process. It isn't just tweaking: I tend to break it apart and remake it every time I do a new draft.

Revision has its own peculiar pleasures and its own peculiar frustrations. The ground rules are already established; the characters already exist. You don't have to bring the characters to life, but you do have to make them more convincing.

In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things.

Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place.

I guess the thing I would say most fervently is that your original impulse to write something is an impulse you should trust, and that if it doesn't work on the first draft, which it hardly ever does, the commitment to revising ought to be something you embrace really early. And to revise and revise and revise.

My reputation for writing quickly and effortlessly notwithstanding, I am strongly in favor of intelligent, even fastidious revision, which is, or certainly should be, an art in itself.

I edit as I write. I revise endlessly. I don't go forward until I know that what I've written is as good as I can make it.