Research argument | Online Solutions

ENGL1020: Composition/Analysis
University of Memphis
Revision of Researched Argument Assignment
I have rewritten-
– often several times – every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”
Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory, 1966
“I don’t write easily or rapidly. My first draft usually has only a few elements worth keeping. I have to find what
those are and build from them and throw out what doesn’t work, or what simply is not alive.”
_ Susan Sontag
*Put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his
own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.”
– Colette, Casual Chance, 1964
“By the time I am nearing the end of a story, the first part will have been reread and altered and corrected at least
one hundred and fifty times. I am suspicious of both facility and speed. Good writing is essentially rewriting. I am
positive of this.”
– Roald Dahl
“The best advice I can give on this is, once it’s done, to put it away until you can read it with new eyes. Finish the
short story, print it out, then put it in a drawer and write other things. When you’re ready, pick it up and read it, as if
you’ve never read it before. If there are things you aren’t satisfied with as a reader, go in and fix them as a writer:
that’s revision.”
– Neil Gaiman