Quotes About Editing

Fatal Vision was a very successful book that a lot of people like, but the problem with it is that you could edit out 75% of the book without losing a single fact or insight.

It was not until I began to write a book called 'Light Years' that an editor really stepped in. The editor was Joe Fox at Random House, and he wound up editing a subsequent book.

We taped all this and then got it transcribed and picked the best lines or ideas or ways to take a scene. I've done that many times, and it can improve the script but also wreck a perfectly good scene.

Any film I've made, I've only really begun to understand in the cutting room. That's when the story shows itself to you, like a wreck coming out of the sea.

In terms of smaller changes over time, I think good plays are like poems. Every syllable counts. So I wrestle with word choice, rhythm in final drafts.

You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

Write when drunk. Edit when sober. Marketing is the hangover.

My creative process is a bit manic at times, to be honest. I wake up Monday and Thursday stressed because I don't have a video. I usually - with the exception of maybe a handful of videos - wake up, write the video, shoot the video, edit the video, release the video all in the same day.

I write the paragraph, then I'm crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then I type it up because sometimes it's almost illegible, and if I wait, I might not be able to read it the next day.

There are plenty of paths to becoming a writer, but I think the most reliable ones involve total commitment: writing for magazines and newspapers, teaching writing, editing books, representing authors.

Every time I sit down to write, I need to commit to a word count goal, otherwise I waste too much time editing and re-editing my previous work, staring dreamily off into space, pretending that I'm thinking profound, poetic thoughts when really I'm just thinking, 'Look at me being a writer! I'm so happy I'm a writer!'

There's no reason you shouldn't, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

Writers have to put up with this editor thing; it is ageless and eternal and wrong.

Unfortunately, there's still a lot of beginning writers who think you can just write your first draft and hand it in.

Editing is the same as quarrelling with writers - same thing exactly.

Writers are in control of editing processes - making a sentence better, cutting out a paragraph. But the initial outpouring has very little to do with conscious control or manipulation.

I have every sympathy for writers. It's a mystery to me what they do. I can edit. I can cross out and say, 'I'm not saying that' or, 'How about we move this to here? Wouldn't that make that bit of the story better?' But where any of it comes from is beyond me. I will never write a play or a novel.

I know many writers who first dictate passages, then polish what they have dictated. I speak, then I polish - occasionally I do windows.

That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.

Writers' bedtimes vary, but few have been spared the shock of a copy editor's early wake-up call.

You know what writers say about their long books: If I had another year, the book would be half as long.

At a magazine, everything you do is edited by a bunch of people, by committee, and a lot of them are, were, or think of themselves as writers. Part of that is because magazines worry about their voice.

They're pretty particular about what they show. They certainly edit the scripts and have conversations with the writers about what they are and aren't willing to portray. But the writers and the network are pretty much on the same page.