Top 100 Quotes About Editing Writing
#1. Editing is like walking across a room strewn with rose petals and thorns. When you can walk across mostly unbloodied, you're finished.
Richard Due
#2. Words are both my vocation and my avocation - reading, writing, editing, teaching.
Christina Baker Kline
#3. [I]n the long run it's worthwhile to see the manuscript as a text capable of improvement.
Barbara Sjoholm
#4. Writing is just very difficult. I'm an adequate performer. And I think I have a special talent as an editor. Editing is what I do best.
Ira Glass
#5. I have a real problem with bloat
I write like fat ladies diet.
Stephen King
#6. I put myself in the place of the listener when editing my writing. The last thing that I want to do is be preached at and told who to be or what to think when listening to an artist. However, I do want to be inspired. There's a fine line.
Macklemore
#7. Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught - prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.
Donald Barthelme
#8. A movie is a creative process from its conception, through its writing, to its execution, to the editing. I think with the best films there is some kind of contribution from one person all the way through that. The best films are made by people who write, direct, and edit, so there's continuity.
Simon Pegg
#9. Writing a novel is like pottery. Your initial draft of your story is like a lump of clay. Editing is like shaping that piece of clay into something interesting and beautiful.
Monika Pardon
#10. If you start to revise before you've reached the end, you're likely to begin dawdling with the revisions and putting off the difficult task of writing.
Pearl S. Buck
#11. A writer must have all the confidence in the world when writing the first draft and none whatsoever when editing subsequent drafts.
T. Davis Bunn
#12. To be a film director is not a democracy, it's really a tyranny. You're the head of the project, for better rather than worse. I write the film and I direct the film, I decide who's going to be in it, I decide on the editing, I put in the music from my own record collection.
Woody Allen
#13. Every writer, of course, has very specific ideas about editors. But writers seldom get the last word on anything.
Terry McDonell
#14. [S]torytelling, in ancient and modern practice, is always a contemplation of the experience of time passing. A story depends on things not standing still, on the built-in condition of impermanence.
Joan Silber
#15. Apparently, my hopes, dreams and aspirations were no match against my poor spelling, punctuation and grammar.
Red Red Rover
#16. I have an amazing team; I have amazing producers; I have amazing writers, but at the end of it, it's me making the decisions on the writing, the tone, the editing.
Ellen DeGeneres
#18. The editing process is a necessary evil. I can write until the cows come home but it is all garbage until it gets edited.
Kim Smith
#19. Repeat the mantra: Writing is when I make the words. Editing is when I make them not shitty.
Chuck Wendig
#21. I don't listen to music when I'm writing, but I often do when I'm reworking, editing or when I need to relax.
Joanne Harris
#22. I never go to the monitor. I just look at the camera monitor and my favorite part of all of the directing, except for the writing and editing of it, is right when we're rolling and they do lines and I'll say "Try this, try this, try this."
Will Gluck
#23. I like every part [of the film process ] except the business and admin stuff. The initial idea. Writing. Re-writing. Casting. Directing, Editing. If I had to chose I'd say writing, followed by putting music on the picture. That is magical.
Ricky Gervais
#24. The slow turtle wins the race!" at it pertains to writing and editing well.
Dennis De Rose
#25. While writing is like a joyful release, editing is a prison where the bars are my former intentions and the abusive warden my own neuroticism.
Tiffany Madison
#27. Many writers profess great exactness in punctuation who never yet made a point.
George D. Prentice
#28. 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.
Naveed Saleh
#29. I've found the best way to revise your own work is to pretend that somebody else wrote it and then to rip the living shit out of it.
Don Roff
#30. Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear.
Patricia Fuller
#32. With the enormous and steady increase in the volume of our literature, we must rely more and more upon sympathetic selection, judicious editing, and the indexer who knows where to exercise discretion. Any simpleton can write a book, but it requires high skill to make an index.
Rossiter Johnson
#33. I've reached that final moment of editing a book - the one where the text manifests as a living breathing person and starts slugging me in the face.
Richard Due
#35. Caesar is not above the grammarians.
Tiberius
#36. You'll learn that the key to a great book is editing - grinding, buffing, and polishing - not writing.
Guy Kawasaki
#37. No words are too good for the cutting-room floor, no idea so fine that it cannot be phrased more succinctly.
Merilyn Simonds
#38. Forcing modern speakers of English to not - whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much sense as forcing modern residents of England to wear laurels and togas.
Steven Pinker
#39. I visited England immediately after I finished writing 'The Marrying Season,' before any editing or revisions.
Candace Camp
#40. I find that the majority of the year, I don't spend acting. I spend it either writing or editing or producing, or putting things together. So it's as shocking as it is tragic. I really enjoy it. It's a valuable skill set. I certainly feel like more of a grownup.
Charlie Day
#41. One of the biggest differences between you and a traditionally published author is that a self-pubbed author is responsible for everything. Not just writing the book - but cover design, editing, producing, distribution, and publicity as well.
M.J. Rose
#42. A story is entirely determined by what portion of time it chooses to narrate.
Joan Silber
#43. If you don't hate your darlings a little by the time they go to press, you haven't edited them enough.
S. Kelley Harrell
#44. As a loyal believer in the Auteur Theory I first felt editing was but the logical consequence of the way in which one shoots. But, what I learned is that it is actually another writing.
Bernardo Bertolucci
#45. Nothing says work efficiency like panic mode.
Don Roff
#46. A writer should be of as great probity and honesty as a priest of God. He is either honest or not, as a woman is either chaste or not, and after one piece of dishonest writing he is never the same again.
Ernest Hemingway,
#47. James Franco, acting, teaching, directing, writing, producing, photography, soundtracks, editing - is there anything you can do?
Natasha Leggero
#48. 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.
Laura Kreitzer
#49. Since I was a child, I've liked telling stories. Maybe because my father's a director, I grew up loving stories. I'm not good at spinning them at a dinner table because I do go on a bit, but I love writing them, and directing is just a way of editing the story.
Mary Stuart Masterson
#51. Love how editing makes you more confident with your book ...but also makes you want to set it on fire at the same time.
Kira Hawke
#52. There is a saying: Genius is perseverance. While genius does not consist entirely of editing, without editing it's pretty useless.
Susan Bell
#53. Editing one's writing is as easy as lighting a match while riding a bicycle.
Fennel Hudson
#54. Making love to me is amazing. Wait, I meant: making love, to me, is amazing. The absence of two little commas nearly transformed me into a sex god.
Dark Jar Tin Zoo
#55. The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is.
August Wilson
#56. Writing is like making love, editing is like giving your great grandfather a sponge bath.
Midnight Taylor
#57. The way I write is this: I write about a thousand words a day, a little bit more. The next morning, I read those thousand words and cursorily edit that. Then I write the next thousand. I do that all the way to the end of the book and then I reread the book quite a few times, editing as go through.
Walter Mosley
#58. Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you have omitted every word that he can spare.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#59. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke.
Arthur Plotnik
#60. We achieve originality of style not by avoiding the influences of others but by blending them into a combination that has not been heard before.
Scott Norton
#61. When you're writing is when the "god should I just drop this" feeling can hit. When you're editing is when the "god this is awful and I've wasted everyone's time and money and will be revealed as a fraud" feeling can hit.
Rian Johnson
#62. I've always equated the writing process with editing, sort of like when I get through editing the movie, that's like my last draft of the screenplay.
Quentin Tarantino
#63. Often you must turn your stylus to erase, if you hope to write anything worth a second reading.
Horace
#64. I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It's all about editing.
Alexander Payne
#65. I like and I love everything that has to do with cinema: writing, directing, editing, creating music, and even acting.
Werner Herzog
#66. I became really aware that when you're making a movie, you're making it three times. You're making it when you're writing it. You're making it when you're shooting it. And then you're remaking it again when you're editing it.
Mark Ruffalo
#67. There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. ( ... )
A good novel editor is invisible.
Terri Windling
#68. There are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content.
Fred Rodell
#69. Make sure your message is clear, yet that you are faithful to its complexity.
Michael Dirda
#70. I am somebody who usually writes out the rough draft in longhand. Then I type it into the computer, and that is where I do my editing. I find that if I write it on the computer, I go too quick. So I like getting that first draft out and then typing it in; you are less self-conscious about it.
Barack Obama
#71. The most basic rule of editing is that if you can't bear to read it, no one else can either. So when you find yourself skimming, commit murder.
Marion Roach Smith
#72. Basically, editing is done in rehearsal and in the writing process and in the acting, so it's very, very tricky, very, very tricky.
Julie Delpy
#73. Writing one's first novel, getting it sold, and shepherding it through the labyrinths of editing, production, marketing, journalism, and social media is an arduous and nerve-wracking process.
Paul Di Filippo
#74. Waiting for the German verb is surely the ultimate thrill.
Flann O'Brien
#75. If you're writing a screenplay for a feature, you don't have any involvement with the casting process, the editing process, the set design, the costume design, or any of that stuff.
David Benioff
#77. So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.
Dr. Seuss
#79. Only God gets it right the first time and only a slob says, Oh well, let it go, that's what copyeditors are for.
Stephen King
#81. 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.
A.J. Flowers
#82. Everything I do with my day is related to Superwoman. I'm either doing conference calls or writing a script or reading a script, editing a video, shooting a video.
Lilly Singh
#83. There's no point in writing my kind of stuff, when they're printing that kind of stuff. So I gave up and started drinking.
Charles Bukowski
#84. Don't be dismayed by the opinions of editors, or critics. They are only the traffic cops of the arts.
Gene Fowler
#85. Sometimes a fresh perspective is all you need to get a second wind on the revision process. Try viewing your material on a different medium; it will shed a new light on the inconsistencies in the dark.
V.S. Watson
#86. I work eight hours a day, but I'm not writing all that time. I'm thinking, editing, looking something up. Thinking is what I do a lot of.
Barbara Taylor Bradford
#87. You are an author! You will be a published author. Take pride in that, and present only your best work. Then, continue to improve, so your best gets even better.
Courage Knight
#88. I quickly realized that I enjoyed editing more than writing. I felt more suited to it and it fit my nurturing personality. I had lots of ideas and a strong sense of structure, and I enjoyed working with talented writers, relishing the give-and-take in making their work better.
Lynn Povich
#89. I tend to elongate the sentences as I'm writing and editing, and there is just something about the feeling of writing longhand that I really love.
Lily King
#90. The discipline of writing a memoir comes in the editing. This is where I cut, slash, and burn - where my creative mind is transformed into a ruthless one. No word escapes my scrutiny. It is here where I see what boundaries need to be set.
Terry Tempest Williams
#91. Editing fiction is like using your fingers to untangle the hair of someone you love.
Stephanie Roberts
#92. I've been writing for years and developing my own films and editing with a friend of mine in Australia.
Aden Young
#93. 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.
Chris Hillman
#94. Rule #1: Writing is for the creative brain. Editing is for the critical brain. Separate them appropriately.
James D. Beers
#95. Writing is probably one-fifth coming up with the stuff, and four-fifths self-editing again and again and again.
David Mitchell
#96. Length is weight in fiction, pretty much.
Joan Silber
#97. I have always believed in the principle that immediate survival is more important than long-term survival.
Jack McClelland
#98. Your job as an executive is to edit, not write. It's OK to write once in a while but if you do it often there's a fundamental problem with the team. Every time you do something ask if you're writing or editing and get in the mode of editing.
Jack Dorsey
#99. Being discouraged is natural but giving up is not an option.
Court Young
#100. The writing itself is no big deal. The editing, and even more than that, the self-doubt, is excruciatingly impossible.
Jonathan Safran Foer
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