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wombatmobileonJuly 19, 2021

You make a good point about the legitimacy of vernaculars.

Separate to idiom is the process of rewriting, whereby rough thoughts are honed to sharp points.

“I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“Revision means throwing out the boring crap and making what’s left sound natural.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson

“Secure writers don't sell first drafts. They patiently rewrite until the script is as director-ready, as actor-ready as possible. Unfinished work invites tampering, while polished, mature work seals its integrity.”
― Robert McKee

“When asked about rewriting, Ernest Hemingway said that he rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times before he was satisfied. Vladimir Nabokov wrote that spontaneous eloquence seemed like a miracle and that he rewrote every word he ever published, and often several times. And Mark Strand, former poet laureate, says that each of his poems sometimes goes through forty to fifty drafts before it is finished.”
― Susan M. Tiberghien, One Year to a Writing Life: Twelve Lessons to Deepen Every Writer's Art and Craft

“I do so much writing. But so much of it never goes anywhere, never sees any light of day. I suppose that's like gardening in the basement. I don't publish so much of what I write. I just seem to plow it back into the soil of what I write after it, rewriting and rewriting, thinking that somehow it gets better after the fifty-second-time around. I need to learn to abandon my writing. To let go of it. Dispose of it, like tissue.”
― J.R. Tompkins

“Writing a first draft is like groping one's way into a dark room, or overhearing a faint conversation, or telling a joke whose punchline you've forgotten. As someone said, one writes mainly to rewrite, for rewriting and revising are how one's mind comes to inhabit the material fully.”
― Ted Solotaroff

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