Best 420 quotes in «editing quotes» category

As an editor, you develop a B.S. meter—an internal warning system that signals caution about journalism that doesn't feel trustworthy. Sometimes it's a quote or incident that's too perfect —a feeling I always had when reading stories by Stephen Glass in the New Republic. Sometimes it's too many errors of fact, the overuse of anonymous sources, or signs that a reporter hasn't dealt fairly with people or evidence. And sometimes it's a combination of flaws that produces a ring of falsity, the whiff of a bad egg. There's no journalist who sets off my bullshit alarm like Ron Suskind.

As the trees turned red, then white, then naked as pitchforks, Margot and Xiao Chen immersed themselves in several forests' worth of pages, and I watched, tortured, as brick after brick of a new development was laid on the wasteland of Midtown West like slabs of gold bullion.

A story that needs to have words said about it, is a story that does not contain all its own right words. -- Introduction to Varley's "Persistence Of Vision" collection

First of all, please, please, don´t go publish until you are one hundred percent sure you are doing a great job, the best that you may deliver. For in this publishing media it´s easy to get it all wrong when you are just starting. Secondly, find a good editor, or at least a second opinion. You know, four eyes read better than two. You will regret later on for not having a good editor to go through your writing, or having a great artist to do the best cover for your book. Because if there is something I learned during these years in the publishing market it is to never ever underestimate the power of good editing. And my third piece will be to advice about a good image: the saying “never judge a book by its cover” was created by a lazy author who didn´t give much thought of what really works in the marketing of both fiction and nonfiction.

As we change, our writing changes too. You cannot write the same poem twice. And that's a good thing.

Border crossing' is a recurrent theme in all aspects of my work -- editing, writing, and painting. I'm interested in the various ways artists not only cross borders but also subvert them. In mythology, the old Trickster figure Coyote is a champion border crosser, mischievously dashing from the land of the living to the land of the dead, from the wilderness world of magic to the human world. He tears things down so they can be made anew. He's a rascal, but also a culture hero, dancing on borders, ignoring the rules, as many of our most innovative artists do. I'm particularly drawn to art that crosses the borders critics have erected between 'high art' and 'popular culture,' between 'mainstream' and 'genre,' or between one genre and another -- I love that moment of passage between the two; that place on the border where two worlds meet and energize each other, where Coyote enters and shakes things up. But I still have a great love for traditional fantasy, for Imaginary World, center-of-the-genre stories. I'm still excited by series books and trilogies if they're well written and use mythic tropes in interesting ways.

But after the war, when editors like Martin Durk came to prominence by trumpeting the timely death of the novel, Parish opted for a reflective silence. He stopped taking on projects and watched with quiet reserve as his authors died off one by one--at peace with the notion that he would join them soon enough in that circle of Elysium reserved for plot and substance and the judicious use of the semicolon.

Don’t cross out. (That is editing as you write. Even if you write something you didn’t mean to write, leave it.) Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. (Don’t even care about staying within the margins and lines on the page.) Lose control. Don’t think. Don’t get logical. Go for the jugular. (If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.)

Editing fiction is like using your fingers to untangle the hair of someone you love.

Editing is the essence of writing!

Everyone thinks alchemy is dead, but alchemists live among us—they are called editors: adept in the art of transformation, they practice arcane methods of selection, deletion and synthesis to take what is base and produce gold.

Books in the YA genre, in particular, should use proper grammar because they're more of an example to young people than adults books are.

C'est neuf pour moi, et très déroutant, lui ai-je dit. En voyant tes annotations sur mes feuillets, j'ai eu le sentiment de perdre un peu de maîtrise sur mon texte, de liberté, de subir une espèce de... censure. Une censure de ce que je suis au plus profond de moi, tu comprends ? Je l'ai vécu comme une intrusion en moi.

Editing is a kind of creative activity where, in a perfect world, an author and an editor find that elusive oneness to understand each other intuitively.

Edit your manuscript until your fingers bleed and you have memorized every last word. Then, when you are certain you are on the verge of insanity...edit one more time!

Editing is like attending a ten year reunion with your characters.

Everything, indeed, in a work of art should be unedited,--and even the words, by the manner of grouping them, of shaping them to new meanings,--and one often regrets having an alphabet familiar to too many half-lettered persons.

Further editing deepens a story.

Good writing is both what one does and does not say.

How do you end a story that’s not yours? Add another sentence where there is a pause? Infiltrate the story with a comma when really there should have been a period? Punctuate with an exclamation point where a period would have sufficed? What if you kill something breathing and breathe life into something the author wanted to eliminate? How do you get inside the mind of a person who isn’t there? Fill the shoes of someone who will never again fill his own?

Growing a culture requires a good storyteller. Changing a culture requires a persuasive editor.

It has been our experience that American houses insist on very comprehensive editing; that English houses as a rule require little or none and are inclined to go along with the author's script almost without query. The Canadian practice is just what you would expect--a middle-of-the-road course. We think the Americans edit too heavily and interfere with the author's rights. We think that the English publishers don't take enough editorial responsibility. Naturally, then, we consider our editing to be just about perfect. There's no doubt about it, we Canadians are a superior breed! (in a letter to author Margaret Laurence, dated May, 1960)

I am hard at work on the second draft ... Second draft is really a misnomer as there are a gazillion revisions, large and small, that go into the writing of a book.

I have always believed in the principle that immediate survival is more important than long-term survival.

Isn't one of the first lessons of good elocution that there's nothing one can say in any rambling, sprawling rant that can't, through some effort, be said shorter and better with a little careful editing? Or that, in writing, there's nothing you can describe in any page-filling paragraph that can't be captured better in just a sentence or two? Perhaps even nothing in any sentence which cannot better be refined in a single, spot-on word? Does it not follow, then, that there's likely nothing one can say in any word - in saying anything at all - that, ultimately, isn't better left unsaid? (attrib: F.L. Vanderson)

It was a miracle to me, this transformation of my acorns into an oak.

[I]t is really the ponderous books which I envy. How easy merely to put down everything you think or imagine. No holding back, no telling oneself that this does not belong, or that. No hewing to the line. No cutting. No fear of letting the interest die. No wastebasket. How wonderful. And how dull!

It is free speech, just edited into defeat.

I want you to judge me without thinking about it. I want you to give me advice without considering my opinion. I want you to expecting anything without the need to trust me. I want you to decide for me with all the care in the world. I want you to help me without smothering me. I want you to decide without seeing my point of view. I want you to hug me without holding me... I want you to feel protected in my presence without me having to lie. I want you to be close without suffocating me. I want you to know everything without knowing anything... I want you to know that both love and friendship should always be Unconditional.

Love how editing makes you more confident with your book ...but also makes you want to set it on fire at the same time.

Most of these editors, as they call themselves, couldn't even effectively edit a haiku.

manuscript meanuscript moanuscript manurescript and so on

Merely because you have got something to say that may be of interest to others does not free you from making all due effort to express that something in the best possible medium and form." [Letter to Max E. Feckler, Oct. 26, 1914]

Most often when I stammer That's my brain Correcting my grammer.

Only the writers can change or fix the past by going back to edit old works

No words are too good for the cutting-room floor, no idea so fine that it cannot be phrased more succinctly.

One of the hardest things for a writer to do is delete words.

Only God gets it right the first time and only a slob says, "Oh well, let it go, that's what copyeditors are for.

Self publishing' is not as easy as it is portrayed! When you think you have finished your book, proof read, proof read again, and again, and again. Don't believe it is ready until you have a hard copy proofed!

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)

Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, build on to that which is already excellent.

Remove the comma, replace the comma, remove the comma, replace the comma...

Put your manuscript down, I'd recommend at least two months. Six would be ideal. You really need to get away from it long enough to change your mindset. Unless you have a photographic memory, this technique will work. You'll transform into the one thing you crave feedback from: a reader.

There is a kind of gaping admiration that would fain roll Shakespeare and Bacon into one, to have a bigger thing to gape at; and a class of men who cannot edit one author without disparaging all others.

The process of editing a piece of writing seems sometimes a lot like natural selection. Your efforts never really eliminate the mistakes. You just cause them to evolve into a sneakier, more robust breed.

So, at the turn of the third millennium, you have chosen to base your principles on a collection of contradictory texts – written by various men years after the death of your man Jesus – that have been edited and selected out of hundreds of other documents, and bound together into one hotchpotch volume, under the orders of a political primate, Pope Damasus. And, you’re still content to condemn the living love I feel here and now, because of that dusty accident of bad editing? Why?

Style and voice are different. Style is standard conventions of writing; voice is the distinct way an individual puts words together. All good writers have a near-uniform understanding of style, but a voice all their own.

The goal of text generation is to throw confused, wide-eyed words on a page; the goal of text revision is to scrub the rods clean so that they sound nice and can go out in public.

There is a saying: Genius is perseverance. While genius does not consist entirely of editing, without editing it's pretty useless.

There should be no crying in copyediting.