8th July 2016 | for Creatives | writing, editing, rewriting, Jojo Moyes |
"What I've found over the years is that I've never regretted anything I've ditched—I've only regretted the stuff I've left in."
"You have to be ruthless. There comes a point when you know in your gut something just isn't working, or isn't as good as it should be."
"We want the art, that's what we're aiming for. We're aiming to suppress our cautious editor who always tells what to do. I think one of the big writers said, 'Write drunk, edit sober.' I say: Write fat, edit lean. In that first draft, put all the extra stuff in, anything that comes into your head. What happens is we self-edit as we're writing—Oh, that's not going to make it in the final. Don't worry about that. Put it in. It's going to add flavor, and it's going to inform the text. Once you're done with that, then go through and put it on a diet. You know, we want a fat baby. They've got the chubby cheeks, the chubby arms, the chubby fingers—we love that! That's good. When the baby grows up, then we want the lean muscle."
"The only reason writers publish is to stop rewriting."
"[The airplane pilot] said, 'Why do you think I do this job? It's for the seven minutes of takeoff and the 11 minutes of landing. The computer does the rest.' And to me, that's like writing. You do it because you get this great idea, and you have the excitement of the first draft, but most of it is revision, and doing the wrong stuff, and fixing and fixing. And then, you get the landing. It's very much the same."
"I never correct anything and I never go back to what I have written, except to the foot of the last page to see where I have got to. If you once look back, you are lost. ... By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day and you aren't disgusted with them until the book is finished, which will be in about six weeks."
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