Quotes About Editing

All I can do is read books and write books and edit books and critique books." —Toni Morrison

I got to spend all of my time every day at work reading and editing papers about cutting-edge technical research and getting paid for it. Then I'd go home at night and turn what I learned into science fiction stories.

Separate the processes of creating from improving. You can't write and edit or sculpt and polish or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don't select. While you sketch, don't inspect. While you write the first draft, don't reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgment.

In any medium, I also start out assuming—even planning—that I'll delete the first thing I do, whether it's a paragraph or the first few rows of a scarf. That makes those first steps far less precious and therefore less intimidating.

I once wrote deduceable instead of deducible in a book, though nobody then or since has taken me up on it. A small point as they go, perhaps, but Rule I of writing acceptably is to get everything right as far as you can, and in this case I had neglected to.

the only manuscripts in her entire career that had required no editing, "no repeat absolutely no editorial suggestions from me or anyone else," were Wilder's and E. B. White's.

Once you take to the habit of deception, every new lie comes that much easier. Though to me it wasn't so much lies as a matter of judicious editing. We all inevitably present a version of ourselves that is a collection of half-truths and exclusions. The way I saw it, the truth was too complicated, whereas the well-chosen lie would put everyone's mind at ease.

this book is almost inexcusably lengthy. For this I must apologize, with the excuse that I did not have time to make it shorter

It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore.

We are the products of editing, rather than authorship.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.

The point of good writing is knowing when to stop.

This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back again.

Writing is one of the easiest things: erasing is one of the hardest.

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

Flaubert had infinite correction to perform.

I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter.

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying . . . one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If, in the first chapter, you say there is a gun hanging on the wall, you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story.

The waste basket is a writer's best friend.

Words and sentences are subjects of revision; paragraphs and whole compositions are subjects of prevision.

An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.

Your book is bloated and self-indulgent

I've never really liked directing. I became a director because I didn't like directors telling me how to edit, and I became a writer because I had to write something in order to be able to direct something. So I did everything out of necessity, but what I really like is editing.

I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You're grateful for these different chances.