Quotes About Editing

An author who rewrites his own work must essentially be two people. One is the free flowing uncritical writer who creates the bulk of the material—the other is the extremely critical editor whose aim it is to make the book as good as it can become.

I started reading my manuscripts out loud, to hear what they sounded like. If the text flows with little effort, then I am satisfied, but if I keep stumbling and stuttering while I read, then I rewrite.

Writing is therapeutic. It helps you cope with issues that seem gargantuan at the time. The process of expressing yourself about a problem, editing your thoughts, and writing some more can help you control issues that you face.

The self-edited author is as foolish as the self-medicated patient.

The process of working with the second unit director and basically sharing your workload with another director is such an interesting, delicate thing - and entrusting that person with your vision and making sure that you are not adding a completely different aesthetic to the mix that you don't have to contend with in editing.

After university, I got a job sub-editing and for years I was a literary editor.

You don't get to be a good screenwriter unless you do 20, 30 drafts: fact.

Editing is a natural extension of collage making. It's actually one of the few areas that women were able to excel in in the film industry from the beginning.

Believe it or not, I don't collaborate with women, though my agent and editor are both females. For the most part, they do little editing on my characters.

When you're directing, you see your ideas. You see them created right in front of you on the monitor and the sound stage. You get that experience all over again when you get into the editing room and you start playing with it.

I revise constantly, as I go along and then again after I've finished a first draft. Few of my novels contain a single sentence that closely resembles the sentence I first set down. I just find that I have to keep zapping and zapping the English language until it starts to behave in some way that vaguely matches my intentions.

Every film starts with two or three images. Then I try to edit these images.

The main thing that I learned from editing is that most people, when they're making a film, they start too early into the story. They will try to set up the characters, they will try to establish things before the plot actually starts.

I love radio, but it's a very limited thing today. Everything has to be edited down to 3:59, and too bad if I didn't make my statement in three minutes and 59 seconds. Everybody's song has to make its point so quickly.

It's hard to edit. It's hard to stay focused. And yet, we know we'll only do our best work if we stay focused. And so, you know, the hardest decisions we made are all the things not to work on, frankly.

If I walk into the editing room, it's six hours lost. I'm massaging frames. I'm, like, 'Oh, take six frames off that shot. Hit the music cue right there.' I will drive everybody crazy if left to my own devices in that room. So I try to do everything I can by staying out of the way.

One of your jobs as a writer is to cut out the noise. All you have is your instincts and your process.

I moved to New York City when I was 20 years old, started making movies non-stop. I didn't have any friends, so I would just sit at home all night editing on my iMac.

I spend time editing and massaging each note. Then I start layering with different instruments, adding harmonies, counterpoint, and whatever the song calls for. Then I arrange it into a whole piece, and decide where I need to add live musicians. It takes a lot of time, but it is very satisfying once it is complete.

I am such a rewriter; I have so many notebooks filled with drafts you wouldn't believe.

David and I got cut out the editing process on that. We were able to affect it more than not. We sent in our notes, we were able to see cuts. We weren't allowed to see dailies and we weren't allowed to sit in the editing room and just work.

Nothing wrong with retouching - nothing new about retouching.

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.

A novel is challenging, because you have more story than you need and you have to select and narrow.