Orhan Pamuk: The Secret to Writing is Rewriting | Big Think

Other people can learn from a writer's life many things because writer's lives are so different; some are possessed with something that comes from outside, some are possessed with their visions. Likes of me are different. I work like a clerk, and then also my books are more like frescoes and epics. So I start from a corner and continue and continue without even knowing what the final picture would be in the end.

Forty years of devotion to the art of the novel taught me one thing: that is to pay attention to people's lives, to pay attention to what you hear about people's lives. This novel, A Strangeness in My Mind, is based on interviews that I did with lots of people. That also taught me to be modest about people's lives and play around with the details of their lives until it really sounds more real than reality.

Most of my life, I did not have a proper editor since I was writing in Istanbul. I am my own editor. But the secrets of writing are rewriting, self-editing, re-editing, reading to your beloved ones, to your wife, to your daughter, to your partner, and hearing the story from other people's point of view—never giving up your high standard of criteria of good writing, and continuing on and on and on and on and editing and editing and taking out, no matter how much time you gave to that beautiful page. Perhaps that can also be cut out...