Quotes About Editing

It is important for poets and writers today to know their shortcomings, and be able to edit their own work as well as reject them if they are not up to their standards.

I film quite a bit of footage, then edit. Changes before your eyes, things you can do and things you can't. My attitude is always 'let it keep rolling.'

There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. (…) A good novel editor is invisible.

Every writer, of course, has very specific ideas about editors. But writers seldom get the last word on anything.

One should never begrudge deletions.

The more nearly the film cutter approaches the natural law of interest, the more invisible will be his cutting. If the camera moves from one person to another at the exact moment that you in the legitimate theatre would have turned your head, you will not be conscious of a cut.

'Heyy Babyy' needed fast cutting and eye contact. It didn't need fancy camera angles.

The less the camera is able to capture what you're seeing in a scene, the more editing it needs.

A scene gets cut a few frames here and there, but there's a cumulative effect to it, and then the music needs to be reworked. It's demanding, but when you see the improved cuts, it's always better.

In cyberspace, the Wikipedians never stop gathering: It's a continuous round-the-clock rolling workfest.

You never have any idea where your movie's going to go when you're shooting - you're in this little bubble. Everything you care about is getting the next step right: getting the script right, finding the right actors, shooting it. Then you spend half a year in a dark room editing your film, and you don't talk to anybody.

The creative process on 'Margaret' was incredibly satisfying. I loved the cast; I had a great time writing the script. I liked making the movie. Believe it or not, I actually like editing the movie. It was all the rest of it that was such a nightmare.

It generally takes me about nine months from the point the book is conceived to the point my editor sends it off to be typeset.

Nothing is cut while I'm shooting. I edit between nine months and a year, and usually have around 80 hours of footage I have to get down to an 82-minute movie.

When I came to 'Gourmet,' I had no clue how to run a magazine; for television, I am fascinated to learn about editing.

I have no control over a film. I don't know what will be left on the cutting floor.

Repeat the mantra: Writing is when I make the words. Editing is when I make them not shitty.

Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it. ( Casual Chance , 1964)

the cardinal labor of composition, which is excision…

I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.

If someday I make a dictionary of definitions wanting single words to head them, a cherished entry will be To abridge, expand, or otherwise alter or cause to be altered for the sake of belated improvement, one's own writings in translation.

Writing doesn't come real easy to me. I couldn't write a novel in a year. It wouldn't be readable. I don't let an editor even look at it until the second year, because it would just scare them. I just have to trust that all these scraps and dead-ends will find a way.

Nobody would ever miss an editor...

It is imperative that your work habits from school do not make their way into your book writing process. I am talking about the practice of typing the last words just before the deadline every time you would hand in an assignment, a paper, or even a thesis. Your book needs time to mature, and you must allow yourself the luxury of rewriting and editing until you are satisfied.