Monday Quote Day – On Revision!

Whether or not you participated in NaNoWriMo last month, I’m sure a lot of you are diving into revisions this month or perhaps getting ready to start revising. So today’s quote day will be about writing’s most vital (and sometimes most difficult) process:

At first glance it may appear too hard. Look again. Always look again.

{Mary Anne Rodmacher}

I love revisions. Where else in life can spilled milk be transformed into ice cream?

{Katherine Paterson}

The great thing about revision is that it's your opportunity to fake being brilliant.

{Will Shetterly}

In baseball you only get three swings and you’re out. In rewriting, you get almost as many swings as you want and you know, sooner or later, you’ll hit the ball.

{Neil Simon}

When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

{Stephen King}

The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.

{Robert Cormier}

I've found the best way to revise your own work is to pretend that somebody else wrote it and then to rip the living shit out of it.

{Don Roff}

That’s the magic of revisions–every cut is necessary, and every cut hurts, but something new always grows.

{Kelly Barnhill}

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

{Colette}

You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. And you edit to let the fire show through the smoke.

{Arthur Polotnik}

Tonight is St. Nick’s Eve! When my siblings and I were little, we would put our shoes on the staircase the night of December 5. The next morning, St. Nicholas Day, our shoes were filled with candy canes, chocolate candy, coins and a wrapped gift, usually a book or small Lego set. It was a wonderful way for us kids to hold out a little longer until Christmas! Does your family celebrate this tradition?

Happy Monday and happy writing, Zigzaggers!!!