Life & Wisdom Quote by Jean M. Auel

"And that's how I start myself. I usually go back a couple of pages, maybe to the beginning of the chapter, and I start reading. And as I'm reading, I'm tweaking - putting in a different word, changing the syntax, putting that clause over there, you know that sort of thing"

Jean M. Auel, Writer

About this Quote

Auel makes revision sound less like tortured genius and more like a practical ritual: you don’t “find” the voice, you re-enter it. The small, almost casual mechanics of “go back a couple of pages” and “start reading” reveal a working novelist’s secret economy. She’s describing an on-ramp. Before the day’s new material can happen, the engine needs heat: cadence, tone, and point of view have to be reloaded into the body, not just remembered in the mind.

The subtext is quietly anti-myth. There’s no lightning strike, no pristine first draft. Instead, writing is presented as a continuity problem, solved by rereading into the current and letting the sentence-level fixes become a form of reconnection. “As I’m reading, I’m tweaking” suggests that revision isn’t a separate stage; it’s the method by which momentum is built. Editing becomes a way to start.

Her diction matters. “Tweaking” is modest, even domestic, flattening what outsiders imagine as high drama into a series of micro-decisions: a “different word,” a syntax shift, “that clause over there.” It’s also an assertion of control. Auel, known for large-scale historical epics, foregrounds the smallest units of craft, implying that big worlds are made by rearranging clauses until they carry the right weight.

Contextually, this is late-20th-century professional authorship speaking: a writer with deadlines, long projects, and stamina. The intent is instructional without being preachy, offering a repeatable habit that demystifies productivity while still honoring the sentence as the real site of art.

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About the Author

Jean M. Auel (born February 18, 1936) is a Writer from USA.

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