looking for a specific William Gibson quote about writing

March 1, 2021 1:21 PM

In the last ~2 years, I remember seeing a quote from William Gibson (I think, but am not sure, it was one of his tweets) where he talked about the writing process as something like feeling terrible about your writing and rewriting and rewriting it until your editors forcibly removed it from your hands to publish it. I am in this stage of writing a book, and I'd like to find the quote/tweet again. Going through twitter advanced search hasn't turned it up yet. Any leads?
posted by zingiberene to Writing & Language (5 answers total)

Gibson on his process in 2010:

Q So, about that terrifying process again. You have four or five people reading your daily output. Do you plow through the draft from beginning to end, or do these poor (and/or extremely lucky) souls have to read things out of order or the same page six times as you revise it?
A I show them the chapters as I write them, and I write them sequentially. If I don't get it right on the first try, I redo it and send it again. As I go along I revise the whole thing continually, piecemeal, but I don't update them on that. Finally I send them the manuscript. So they read it initially as a serial, every few days. I don't really do drafts, more a constant termite-like seething. I actually enjoy that aspect of the process. I feel like they're badly written but handsomely revised. Revision is largely stress-free. And they are, initially, in my opinion, not that well written. And while I know that they don't have to be, at that point, it still pains me.

posted by zamboni at 1:42 PM on March 1, 2021 [3 favorites]

“The secret to writing is overcoming the very natural revulsion to your own work.” This is from the Eileen Gunn collection “Stable Strategies”
posted by sixswitch at 2:02 PM on March 1, 2021 [2 favorites]

I've seen this recently, or something quite similar. It was probably on Pinterest, if that helps. I can't find it now but I'll keep trying because Now I Must Find It!
posted by BoscosMom at 3:16 PM on March 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

Many writers have said things like this. Both Paul Valery and W.H. Auden have been credited with saying, "A poem is never finished, only abandoned."
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 9:32 PM on March 1, 2021 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: These are all very good quotes, thank you! Alas, not the specific one articulated by Gibson that was pretty literally about work being taken out of your hands (or being forced to hand work over). The search continues!
posted by zingiberene at 2:34 PM on March 5, 2021