Quotes About Editing

In 'Serena,' stuff happens, then nastier stuff, without ever engaging the viewer's rooting interest or sick fear. Sometimes it's a question of sloppiness on the set or in the editing room.

I'm homemade. I upload my videos in my living room; I edit everything, and I upload on my laptop. And my viewers love that about me, and they get inspired and do it themselves.

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.

Vigorous writing is concise.

Yes, in my books I do edit myself to keep from becoming the Village Explainer.

I've been called a villain and things like that, but I never put the blame on editing.

Some of our early work was two minutes twenty when it actually came out on vinyl, very, very, very short. Sometimes if you made a three-minute record they would make you do an edited version for radio, particularly in America.

What helps change bad writing into mediocre writing is editing. Editing is in bad shape in print journalism, and is in virtually nonexistent shape in online journalism.

That's the only way I can control my movie. If you shoot everything, then everything is liable to end up in the movie. If you have a vision, you don't have to cover every scene.

There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book.

It's Wendell's job to help me edit my story. All therapists do this: What material is extraneous? Are the supporting characters important or a distraction? Is the story advancing or is the protagonist going in circles? Do the plot points reveal a theme?

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

You can always edit something bad. You can't edit something blank.

She found out that you could do a lot of editing with three words, if they were yes, no, and shit.

One must be ruthless with one's own writing or someone else will be.

Sorry this is such a long letter, but I didn't have time to write a shorter one.

kill my darlings

Evolution advances, not by a priori design, but by the selection of what works best out of whatever choices offer. We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.

I don't edit on laptops anymore.

Let go of the idea that somehow you can outsmart a first draft. Because I have never met anybody who can.

Every edit is a lie.

I cut up loads. I always want everything shorter, shorter, shorter.

Every song is a long process. First I have to write a story for it, and then to make it into a song, I have to make it short and then shorter - so it's not easy!