Quotes About Editing

Every director knows it is his job to be manipulative. When you make an edit, you are trying to manipulate.

Although no one loves a typo, it's close to impossible to eradicate every single little mistake in a manuscript.

After my husband spell-checks one of my manuscripts, my editor says, 'It's been Normanized.'

In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices.

All experienced writers know the key to great writing isn't in what they say; it's in what they don't say. The more we cut out, the better the screenplay or book.

Simply invite customers to be interviewed and ask them the following questions. Once the video is edited and b-roll is inserted, you can feature your video on your website or in a nurturing or sales e-mail campaign.

Commas are not your friend.

Some people think of editing as the physical act of cutting," Hirsch says. "But that's a misconception. The French use the word montage for editing, which means 'to build.' And I think that is a more precise description.

That's what happens nowadays with people working on computers. They can so easily fix things with their mouse and take out all the, 'Oh, somebody coughed in the background we need to take that out' - or somebody hit a bad note. Those are all the best moments.

if the way ahead is not clear, time is often the best editor of one's intentions.

What I don't write is as important as what I write.

For one thing, it is hard for me to let a sentence stand if I see something wrong with it. Even when I'm writing a grocery list it is hard for me not to correct a misspelling.

For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.

But you don't see with hindsight in a first draft. You have to finish the first draft to see what you've missed.

And must not, it may be asked, all this labour spent upon Keats' memory and remains, all this load of editing and re-editing and commentary and biography and scholiast-work laid upon a poet who declared that all poems ought to be understood without any comment, — must it not by this time have fairly smothered, or is it not at least in danger of smothering, Keats himself and his poetry?

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.

My writing is riddled with such tics of uncertainty. I have no excuse or solution, save to allow myself the tremblings, then go back in later and slash them out. In this way I edit myself into a boldness that is neither native nor foreign to me.

It is absurd, Barthes says, to try to flee from language's assertive nature 'adding to each sentence some little phrase of uncertainty, as if anything that came out of language could make language tremble.' My writing is riddled with such tics of uncertainty. I have no excuse or solution, save to allow myself the tremblings, then go back in later and slash them out. In this way I edit myself into a boldness that is neither native nor foreign to me.

It is absurd, Barthes says, to try to flee from language's assertive nature by 'adding to each sentence some little phrase of uncertainty, as if anything that came out of language could make language tremble.' My writing is riddled with such tics of uncertainty. I have no excuse or solution, save to allow myself the tremblings, then go back in later and slash them out. In this way I edit myself into a boldness that is neither native nor foreign to me.

And before that, there was, oh, I don't know, editors experiencing demonic possessions and devouring lagging midlist writers. It's always something.

Years working at a newspaper. You learn to write fast and reasonably good and in a manner which does not require substantial editing. Or your editors and copyeditors stab you to death and hang your corpse in the newsroom as a warning to the other staff writers.

I can't drag myself away from 'Final Cut Pro.' It is a digital video editing system. I am obsessed with it, but I am always away from home, and I can't use it.

For writers, handing a manuscript off to an editor is like walking into a parole hearing. You've done the time but wonder if it's going to satisfy the judge.

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.