Quotes About Editing

I don't think music affects what words I choose to type in what order, within what punctuation, at this point, because I'm rereading and editing each sentence, at this point, in my published books, probably 100-150 times each, on average, and listening to probably 20-60 different songs in that time.

I find getting the first draft down to be the biggest challenge. Every word, every punctuation mark, every plot point is a decision. It's much more fun to play with something that already exists.

Some people like to purge out a draft and just let it go and then go back and fix it, but I'm a writer-rewriter. I can't move on until I feel like it's presentable.

I love to see what real human behavior looks like. I've always envisioned my job as just observing and noting that and, for the purposes of my work, just cutting out the boring parts.

I grew up on Long Island, and from as early as I can remember, as far back as first grade, I had two real passions - one of them was putting on plays, and the other was journalism. I was directing plays and editing school papers from first grade on, all the way through college.

Ulysses could have done with a good editor. You know people are always putting Ulysses in the top 10 books ever written but I doubt that any of those people were really moved by it.

The problems I have with a flawed script are always revealed in the editing room.

I thought it was a wonderful line - right on the cutting room floor.

Oh, I'm always laughing with the children in 'Supernanny,' but you don't see it because Ricochet decide what to leave on the cutting-room floor and what to keep in.

I just ended up focusing on film editing as I was getting my career started. I'm very passionate about editing and will continue to edit for the rest of my career, but it's not like that was all I did and then somehow I grew into directing a movie.

Even a fiction film is hard to end. You can going on shooting and editing a documentary forever.

A lot of directors, they don't go into the editing room during the shoot. When they come back, they've forgotten what they've shot. That's why their films come out a year after they shoot them.

My forte is editing and I am most experienced in that. I love the challenge of playing with material and imagination while editing.

I couldn't tell if any frames were removed. Seen as a whole it shows that I have seen. Seeing you have 18 frames a second you can take out one or two and I couldn't tell.

You should always go through the first draft of a book all at once, I think, to get the best results. You can take time off after the first draft and come back to it fresh.

So, I was always frustrated having to write and having to cut things. Why should you have to cut anything?

We were working on 'Senna' for a long time before we were fully financed, so we didn't actually have an editor for a while.

Fundamentally, I always find that most of the films that I've put out are essentially the director's cut. Part of the process with a director's cut is the leaving behind of certain aspects of the movie that we don't feel necessary because they aren't part of the dynamic of the story.

For any writer, the ability to look at a sentence and see what's superfluous, what can be altered, revised, expanded, and, especially, cut, is essential.

I don't come from a film background. I haven't learned anything about films or film-making. But I have a thirst to know everything about my profession. I want to learn about cinematography, about editing, about music recordings, about post-production. So when people in the know talk, I willingly listen.

I rewrite my books many times before submitting them, and after my editor takes a look I wind up rewriting some more! It's a good thing I learned at an early age to keep on trying. Stick to it, and eventually you'll get there.

Let's put it this way: if you are a novelist, I think you start out with a 20 word idea, and you work at it and you wind up with a 200,000 word novel. We, picture-book people, or at least I, start out with 200,000 words and I reduce it to 20.

There's something about seeing a movie that you like, and being able to see the scenes that didn't make it, just as a window into the process of how choices are made and how a movie is made. To me, the idea of getting to have the scenes on the DVD is very exciting.

I spend a huge amount of time writing about the book instead of writing the actual text.