Writing Quotes - Eliminate, Edit

is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
Scott Adams


You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.
Larry Niven


Most editors are failed writers - but so are most writers.
T.S. Eliot


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 Polotni


All writing is a process of elimination.
Martha Albrand





This will only happen after you've been writing and failing for a good long time. Then you develop a kind of critical sense about what you write. You can tell when something is good, but it would be just as good in somebodys work too. You want to hold out for those things only you could say.
James Dickey



There is no great writing, only great rewriting.

Justice Brandeis




Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.
Louise Brooks




Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

Orson Scott Card




I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

Truman Capote




It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly.
C. J. Cherryh




Books aren't written, they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it...
Michael Crichton




The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Thomas Jefferson




Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it.
Stephen King




The moment of recognizing your own lack of talent is a flash of genius.

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec




I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

James A. Michener




I have written - often several times - every word I have ever published.
Vladimir Nabokov




I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Blaise Pascal




The wastepaper basket is the writer's best friend.

Isaac Bashevis Singer



It is my contention that a really great novel is made with a knife and not a pen. A novelist must have the intestinal fortitude to cut out even the most brilliant passage so long as it doesn't advance the story.

Frank Yerby