Read through the most famous quotes by topic #editing
I'd known since girlhood that I wanted to be a book editor. By high school, I'd pore over the acknowledgments section of novels I loved, daydreaming that someday a brilliant talent might see me as the person who 'made her book possible' or 'enhanced every page with editorial wisdom and insight.' Could I be the Maxwell Perkins to some future Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Wolfe? ↗
I think of rounds of editing as hammer time. Then, when they interrupt my writing, I can say... *shakes head* Nah, I just can't do it. Although when I come across a brilliant line, I do think, Can't touch this. And when I'm worried I'm overwriting a scene, I think, Hammer, don't hurt 'em. ↗
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? ↗
Authors who moan with praise for their editors always seem to reek slightly of the Stockholm syndrome. ↗
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. ↗
There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation. ↗
#improvisation #jazz #just #procedures #talks