During a 1958 interview by the Paris Review, Ernest Hemingway (pictured) made a now-famous comment about rewriting:Interviewer: How much rewriting do you do?
Hemingway: It depends. I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, 39 times before I was satisfied.
Interviewer: Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?
Hemingway: Getting the words right.
In the same spirit, E. B. White wrote: “You discover what you really think by hacking away at your first spontaneous utterance.”
The Takeaway: Good writing, if it occurs at all, occurs during the rewrites.
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