Mark Twain Quotes

You need not expect to get your book right the first time.

If you get a sense that your writing isn't quite working, change it. Or cut it out. Don't just tell yourself it'll do, because it won't.

You become a great writer by writing.

Don't talk about writing. Write. Don't show unfinished work to anyone. Don't show finished work to non-writers. Get your opinions, not from friends and family, but by sending your work out to editors. An endless stream of rejection slips means you need to learn more. So learn more.

I'm a fairly fast, but sloppy writer, so I'm a big fan of re-writing, and re-writing again.

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something-anything-down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft-you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft-you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. 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.

I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft.

You have to be willing to throw [writing] stuff away and replace it.

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

The advice I would offer to any writer is that even when you think you have revised your book to the point where you cannot look at it again, it is time to sit down and revise it some more.

Writing tips are like mini skirts. Sometimes they fit perfectly, sometimes they make you cry, and sometimes you can reuse the material and sew yourself a pillow or something.

You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.

I came up with a story and I wrote it.

The written word is the basic of everything. Most important, the idea, and after that, the dialogue. You can rehash the dialogue as you go along, it 's disgraceful to have to do this, but now and again you have no choice.

Songwriting is like editing. You write down all this stuff - all this bad, stupid stuff - and then you have to get rid of everything except the very best.

Some people like to purge out a draft and just let it go and then go back and fix it, but I'm a writer-rewriter. I can't move on until I feel like it's presentable.

Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing.

I try to leave out the parts readers skip.

If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.

There are writers whose first drafts are so lean, so skimpy, that they must go back and add words, sentences, paragraphs to make their fiction intelligible or interesting. I don't know any of these writers.

Read a ton. Take a workshop course so you learn to give and get criticism.

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.

If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it.

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.