Quotes About Editing

I was very disappointed that so much of the work I did on The Haunted Mansion didn't arrive in the final cut.

I work with a lot of different editors at different publishers and magazines and so on, and having a system of shared folders makes keeping track of things a snap.

It's the ultimate identity theft when you start messing with somebody's work. Thinking that you could edit the work, or mix it differently, or re-EQ it, or make claims about it that aren't true.

This notion of changing technology interests me. I work on a computer now, and it's not been easy to adjust. I still prefer to have my hands on film when I'm editing.

You can't rewrite nothing, but you can rewrite 90 pages of sh*t. Now you've got your sh*t on the page, you can go work.

Revising a screenplay is much more frustrating than revising a song because you have to read through the entire work again while you are changing stuff. It is a lot easier to edit a song.

I rewrite everything, almost idiotically. I rewrite and work and work, and rewrite and rewrite some more.

Most writers want to share their essay or book much too quickly. Those who accept the pain of hard work and revising are those who get published.

I revise and revise and revise. I'm not even sure "revise" is the right word. I work a story almost to death before it's done.

It seems the best work I do is when I am really allowing the unconscious to rule the page and then later I can go back and hack around and make sense of things.

I've never had to work out of the arts. I've always either been a writer or an editor, or something where I've made my living from doing what I love. You can't get any better than that.

I like to do the camera work myself because I kind of feel it, you know, I don't articulate it, I feel it. It's the same with editing.

I used to work as a proofreader at Merrill Lynch.

Fill your pages with details. Work hard to get the right word.

Most written work is a conversation between the editor and the writer, that the writer essentially fulfills in public, and the editor provides the stage for that to happen as well as the prompts.

Editing is work, and it's hard to do while working on one's own writing.

If a scene doesn't work on three levels - it's not advancing the story, the characters, and telling me something new - then put it in the trash.

I think Gram did his best work in co-writes. Sometimes when you're working with one other person, it's such a magical thing. You're editing each other and you're trying to create that one spark.

My journals were a clearing house - a garbage can. Once I was writing seriously, I understood that this was the stuff that didn't belong in my work.

Of all the excellent copyedits I've received over the years, Marie-Lynn Hammond's was by far the best. Her work on Half Blood Blues was incredibly sensitive and astute.

Generally you don't initiate the projects - they're designed and you're inserted. Your material is edited by somebody. You feel a lack of power over your work.

There are good photographers who might elevate themselves to the ranks of the great simply by burning most of their work.

3D doesn't work quite so well with quick cuts and I probably would have done some longer takes had I really taken that information onboard.

I think the only reason people use PCs is because they have to. Mac is the most streamlined computer there is. I started using the Mac in college because I was doing editing, and they were the only computers we could use to do that.