Top 84 Writing Is Editing Quotes
#1. People think that writing is writing, but actually writing is editing. Otherwise, you're just taking notes
Chris Abani
#2. A story is already over before we hear it. That is how the teller knows what it means.
Joan Silber
#3. In writing, there is art. And in art there is craft ...
Susi Moore
#4. Writing is a piece of cake. Editing is a slab of liver.
Evels
#5. There's nothing sexier than imaging myself as an Oxford comma getting unambiguously banged. Throw in a semicolon in between two closely related independent clauses, and a volcanic love of punctuation eruption is guaranteed.
Ella Dominguez
#6. We never end up with the book we began writing. Characters twist it and turn it until they get the life that is perfect for them. A good writer won't waste their time arguing with the characters they create ... It is almost always a waste of time and people tend to stare when you do!
C.K. Webb
#7. The best way of writing sex scenes is to do the first draft, orgasm, and then start editing. You can be objective post-orgasm.
Christos Tsiolkas
#8. The writing is what gives me the joy, especially editing myself for the page, and getting something ready to show to the editors, and then to have a first draft and get it back and work to fix it, I love reworking, I love editing, love love love revision, revision, revision, revision.
George Carlin
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear.
Patricia Fuller
#14. Caesar is not above the grammarians.
Tiberius
#15. You'll learn that the key to a great book is editing - grinding, buffing, and polishing - not writing.
Guy Kawasaki
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. A story is entirely determined by what portion of time it chooses to narrate.
Joan Silber
#19. 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
#20. 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,
#21. James Franco, acting, teaching, directing, writing, producing, photography, soundtracks, editing - is there anything you can do?
Natasha Leggero
#22. 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
#23. Slowed time is -- or should be -- a way of pointing to what's important.
Joan Silber
#24. Editing while you're writing is like strangling the baby in the crib.
Quincy Jones
#25. Your first draft is a petulant teenager, sure it knows best, adamant that its Mother is wrong. Your third draft has emerged from puberty, realising that its Mother was right about everything.
Angeline Trevena
#26. Her face was as red as her hair. "What are you doing," she cried.
Devon put a question mark next to the sentence. "Editing your paper." What did it look like he was doing?
"You're just cutting out stuff!"
"What do you think editing is?
M.M. John
#27. A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.
Richard Bach
#28. Writing is like riding a bike. Once you gain momentum, the hills are easier. Editing, however, requires a motor and some horsepower.
Gina McKnight
#29. Although selfhood depends causally upon the existence of the brain, it amounts to something far more than the brain. This something is vague and intangible, and might best be described, I think, as a semi-fictional narrative that is in constant need of writing, editing, and preserving.
Neel Burton
#30. Writing is all about self-editing; it's all about being present being aware of what's happening
Joan Armatrading
#31. Writing is like shadow boxing. Editing is when the shadows fight back.
Adam Copeland
#32. One of the hardest things for a writer to do is delete words.
Alessandra Torre
#33. To write three series a year you only need to commit to writing 10 pages per day, or editing 50 pages of text per day. Plus, writing is my job, and I need to write to eat, so I'm highly motivated to get up and get to work!
Victoria Laurie
#35. The editing of a good piece of writing is like the editing of one's life: never quite complete; rendering all, ultimately, unfinished works when we perish from this earth.
K.C. Woodworth
#36. Writing
is therapeutic. It helps you cope with issues that seem gargantuan at the time.
The process of expressing yourself about a problem, editing your thoughts, and
writing some more can help you control issues that you face.
Guy Kawasaki
#37. It's easier to teach a poet how to read a balance sheet than it is to teach an accountant how to write.
Henry R. Luce
#38. 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.
Libba Bray
#39. [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!
Mary Roberts Rinehart
#41. 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)
Colette
#42. You generally know when someone asks you to do something- am I more writing, or am I more editing? The editor is the best metaphor for your job.
Keith Rabois
#43. It's not words, but years we should be editing. Remember: time spent on bad art is a form of redundancy, doing the same thing twice is a form of tautology, and wasting precious moments complaining about life is a form of pleonasm. We should all learn to live our lives concisely.
Anthony Marais
#44. 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
#45. I have always believed in the principle that immediate survival is more important than long-term survival.
Jack McClelland
#46. 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
#47. Being discouraged is natural but giving up is not an option.
Court Young
#48. The writing itself is no big deal. The editing, and even more than that, the self-doubt, is excruciatingly impossible.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#49. There is a saying: Genius is perseverance. While genius does not consist entirely of editing, without editing it's pretty useless.
Susan Bell
#50. Editing one's writing is as easy as lighting a match while riding a bicycle.
Fennel Hudson
#51. 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
#52. The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is.
August Wilson
#53. Writing is like making love, editing is like giving your great grandfather a sponge bath.
Midnight Taylor
#54. 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
#55. Length is weight in fiction, pretty much.
Joan Silber
#56. There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. ( ... )
A good novel editor is invisible.
Terri Windling
#57. There are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content.
Fred Rodell
#58. Make sure your message is clear, yet that you are faithful to its complexity.
Michael Dirda
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. Waiting for the German verb is surely the ultimate thrill.
Flann O'Brien
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. Repeat the mantra: Writing is when I make the words. Editing is when I make them not shitty.
Chuck Wendig
#74. 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
#75. [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
#76. 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
#77. So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.
Dr. Seuss
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. Editing fiction is like using your fingers to untangle the hair of someone you love.
Stephanie Roberts
#83. Rule #1: Writing is for the creative brain. Editing is for the critical brain. Separate them appropriately.
James D. Beers
#84. Writing is probably one-fifth coming up with the stuff, and four-fifths self-editing again and again and again.
David Mitchell
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