Editors Quotes - Page 21

The funny thing is, when I've gone through the relentless editing process, my editor and I are amazed the Mercy Watson books still make us laugh. The same jokes that made us laugh the first time around still make us laugh in the 16th rendition.

When it is my editor telling me how to rewrite a story, I listen and do what she asks because I have learned that I get a better book in the end. I can't say I'm happy when I read that editorial letter. It is always a little painful and scary. But I have learned that - bit by bit - I can make the changes and do the work.

Working as an editor was like being a professional reader, and the better I became at reading the better I became at writing.

An editor is like a professional reader, and as I became a better reader, I also became a better writer.

To be a good editor or a good writer, I think you really need to be a great reader first.

Not too many people know who the editor is.

Having been an editor for more than a decade, I thought I had a good idea of how much work was involved in writing a novel. I was wrong! Writing is a lot harder than I ever imagined - but worth it.

I have wanted to write from a young age, but working with so many gifted authors and editors over the years has taught me so much. I doubt I would be where I am today without that amazing experience.

I have to trust that if a story is strong, it can find its readership, and good editors can steer me well.

The fuzzy boundary lines between different readership ages have always puzzled me, so these days I just write what comes, and assume I can fix the mess later with an editor's help.

Sometimes, I repeat myself, and that was a second elimination [of Barack Obama]. I worked with a team, including a great editor who, as the project came together, suggested other additions and eliminations. It was a process.

When I went in, my editor said, ‘I hope you don’t think you’re a writer.’ And I said, ‘I hope you don’t think I’m a journalist.’ And, uh, turned out we were both right.

The border between editing and ghostwriting is, at its extremes, a bit porous. An editor really improves and sometimes restructures a manuscript and suggests changes.

Regan has been amused, in the intervening years, to watch editors who rolled their eyes at Limbaugh scramble to try to duplicate his success. What people respond to in this culture is loud and brash and pointed and sometimes vulgar -- that`s what gets p... Judith Regan.

The 'creator' and the 'editor' - two halves of the writer whole - should sleep in separate rooms.

Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

Being an editor doesn't make you a better writer - or vice versa. The worst thing any editor can do is be in competition with his writer.

The truth is, an actor's performance is the result of work by a lot more people than just the actor. When you see that character portrayed up on screen, there is the work certainly of the actor, but there's the work of the editor, there's the work of what the camera was doing. What the music was doing, all of the above.

The last thing reporters and editors want to be told is what to do and how to write. They don't want to be some politically correct, Orwellian, kind of like "you're telling me how to write about...?"

By this point, it was clear she wasn't interested in continuing the relationship. What publication on earth would continue a relationship with a writer who would refuse to discuss her work with her editors? What publication would continue to publish a writer who attacked it on TV? What publication would continue to publish a writer who lied about it - on TV and to a Washington Post reporter? ... It's true: Ann is fearless, in person and in her writing. But fearlessness isn't an excuse for crappy writing or crappier behavior.

The professions of novelist and journalist are very separate. As a novelist, you are ultimately working for yourself. Yes, you need the approval of a publisher and an audience, but what is valued in fiction writing - style, individual voice, insight - is scorned by the editor who is combing through your newspaper article.

I have always had a hard time revising my work as a journalist, which was never much of a problem. You always have editors as backstops. Their job is to perfect your story. Most of them want to be useful.

Novelists may be able to seek advice from readers and editors, but in the end, it is up to them to get the book right.

I think it sort of dawns on you that if you're not gigging constantly you're not actually relevant. You may be relevant to a different part of the media now, to television commissioners and editors, but to a young live-comedy audience you're not, really.

When debtors once have borrowed all we have to lend, they are very apt to grow shy of their creditors' company.