Editing Quotes - Page 2

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.

Writing is a bitch. It's an itch that I love to scratch.

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

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

Writing Tip:Don't let the "writing rules" bog you down when you're writing the first draft; they don't matter when you're writing the story, only when you're editing the story.

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.

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?

Why isn't the manuscript ready? Because every book is more work than anyone intended. If authors and editors knew, or acknowledged, how much work was ahead, fewer contracts would be signed. Each book, before the contract, is beautiful to contemplate. By the middle of the writing, the book has become, for the author, a hate object. For the editor, in the middle of editing, it has become a two-ton concrete necklace. However, both author and editor will recover the gleam in their eyes when the work is completed, and see the book as the masterwork it really is.

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.

When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.