Quotes About Editing

I am not altogether confident of my ability to put my thoughts into words: My texts are usually better after an editor has hacked away at them, and I am used to both editing and being edited. Which is to say that I am not oversensitive in such matters.

Open this book to a random page. With a pencil, mark any word or phrase that you think does not contribute to the meaning of a passage or chapter. 2. Pick another page. As an exercise, imagine that you have been assigned to cut 10 percent. Mark the candidates for deletion.

If you goal is to achieve precision and concision, begin by pruning the big limbs. You can shake out the dead leaves later.

Ben Yagoda's fine book When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It.

Strunk & White

The first Chapter Law is, "Don't spend much time on it. You're going to have to rewrite it."

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Once the grammar has been learned, writing is simply talking on paper and in time learning what not to say.

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.

To me, editing is not something you can do in a rush because the artists themselves are not always their own best editors. Time is absolutely everything.

Each time I see a split infinitive, an inconsistent tense structure or the unnecessary use of the passive voice, I blister.

even the outright deletions that Ayn Rand's editor should have taken care of).

A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft—you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft—you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.

The first draft is the down draft - you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft - you fix it up.

clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. Clutter is wonderfully fertile ground—you can still discover new treasures under all those piles, clean things up, edit things out, fix things, get a grip.

You must demolish the work and start over. You can save some of the sentences, like bricks. It will be a miracle if you can save some of the paragraphs, no matter how excellent in themselves or hard-won. You can waste a year worrying about it, or you can get it over with now. (Are you a woman, or a mouse?)

You should make sure that the quotable lines of dialogue in your book never exceed a hundred and forty characters!" seemed

You need editors, not brand managers,who will push the envelope to make [a brand media property] go forward.

Sorry that this e-booklet is so short. Actually, if I hadn't spent so much time on it, it would be longer.

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion. 2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done. 3. There is no editing stage. 4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it. 5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.

orr we find a typo in a book.

Great writers know what to cut out. It's the same in life. Clear ambitions. Clear relationships. This is the stuff of good story.

I'm making art and making decisions and editing things. I don't live my life to broadcast it into the art world; I don't see it as my life on the stage.