Quotes About Editing

I apologize for the length of this letter. If I had had more time, it would have been shorter.

Schreiben ist leicht, man muss nur die falschen Worte weglassen.

Hans Christian Andersen: We co-write them. I just don't do any of the writing. I change the bits I don't like and then erase all the rest from history. I'm more like a German theatre director. Or, y'know, a German generally.

One method of economy is 'leaving out' - firstly, everything that by the writer's standards is irrelevamt, in the second place everything that is obvious, i.e. which the reader can and should supply out of his own imagination. 'The more bloody good stuff you cut out the more bloody good your novel will be,' Hemingway advised a young writer.

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings.

To write is human, to edit is divine.

When you write you tell yourself a story. When you rewrite you take out everything that is NOT the story.

I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave duiring a period of severe sunspot activity.

When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story," he said. "When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

Only God gets it right the first time and only a slob says, Oh well, let it go, that's what copyeditors are for.

One rule of the road not directly stated elsewhere in this book: 'The editor is always right.' The corollary is that no writer will take all of his or her editor's advice; for all have sinned and fallen short of editorial perfection.

I have a real problem with bloat -- I write like fat ladies diet.

I got a scribbled comment that changed the way I rewrote my fiction once and forever. Jotted below the machine-generated signature of the editor was this mot: "Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%. Good luck.

Enough of this. Does every conversation with you have to be the director's cut? Get out of the car.

I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.

had set out to tell you exactly what happened. But since I am the one writing this, how do I know what in my telling I am selecting, omitting, emphasizing; what unconscious editing I am doing?

How many of his small gestures and postures in the present were embodied echoes of the past, repetitions just beneath the threshold of his consciousness? What would happen to the past if you brought those involuntary muscle memories under your control and edited them, edited them out?

One of the hazards of having a good idea is that intelligent people tend to realize it is a good idea and seek to play a part. Like most novelists, Montagu did not like the editing process. He did not like the way Operation Mincemeat was being watered down. He did not like senior officers pulling rank and tinkering with a project in which he had invested so much of his time, energy, and personality.

I know everything that you can do with digital processing and digital editing inside and out, but I absolutely refuse to push the buttons and don't even want to know how to load and unload the files.

There's only one movie in my career I've had regrets with cutting it shorter, and I think some scenes maybe I shouldn't have cut.

There's a lot of films that have relatively rigid road maps because they have a script and others that are less rigid because they have less of a script, like 'Elephant.' The road map becomes more interpretive, maybe, than one with a detailed script. Editing-wise, they all have their problems.

I don't listen to music when I'm writing, but I often do when I'm reworking, editing or when I need to relax.

One thing I have noticed is that when you're a younger editor, you're more intense about it. As you go along, you relax a little. More and more, I feel that the book is the author's. You give the author your thoughts, and it's up to him or her to decide what to do.