Editing And Writing Quotes

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter. ~ James A. Michener

Sit down and 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. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Winston worked in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT (a single branch of the Ministry of Truth) editing and writing for The Times. He dictated into a machine called a Speakwrite. Winston would receive articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, in Newspeak, rectify. If, for example, the Ministry of Plenty forecast a surplus, and in reality the result was grossly less, Winston's job was to change previous versions so the old version would agree with the new one. ~ George Orwell

And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke. ~ Arthur Plotnik

No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published. ~ Russell Lynes

The momentum of production keeps you from giving up, so it's really the editing and writing phases where things can look bleakest. ~ Rian Johnson

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out. ~ Samuel Johnson

Words weren't a solace, but they focused one's emotions into something more tangible; they were splinters that could actually be pulled from the heart and placed on a table, regarded. ~ Victor Lodato

Perfection should generally be avoided in a character. Real people, such as your readers, aren't flawless and chances are they are not going to be able to fully identify with a character who is. ~ Craig Hart

Quite often when I record a song, writing it and making a demo is the big thing and, after that, I think, how do I actually translate this into real life? A lot of the time I think I can't be bothered. ~ Mick Jagger

I think we've had rather too much dirt rather than not enough. That's not a prudish English remark, but a statement of saturation. These up-and-coming young men," she splutters. "Penelope Fitzgerald
they think, 'Ah! Middle-aged lady with frizzy hair and a nice smile; she must be writing tastefully.' I say she's writing against taste, quite savagely. But they don't pick it up because they're brash young men poncing about, waving their blood and thunder and condoms! ~ A.S. Byatt

So we all know the cliché characters: the Irish cop, the prostitute with a heart of gold, the writer with a drinking problem, and so forth. Clichés often exist for a reason, of course, and sometimes it's okay to use a tried and true character. But not always. Populate your stories with only stock characters and there won't be any reason to read your tales over anyone else's. ~ Craig Hart

You have to write scenes and design scenes that are scary and horrific, but that are also watchable. I didn't want people to just feel like they got punched in the stomach. ~ Eli Roth

The water in music the oar forsakes. The air in music the wing forsakes. All things in move in music and write it. The mouse, lizard, and grasshopper sing together on the Turlock sands, sing with the morning stars. ~ John Muir

Since the tragedy of Marina's death, her parents have heard from strangers around the globe surprised to find themselves writing to share the impact of "meeting" Marina through her words: Jewish teenagers visiting a series of concentration camps while on "The March of the Living" and finding specific comfort and renewed purpose in her writings; college peers living more mindfully; musicians writing songs inspired by her; older readers making midlife recalibrations and career changes, whether they are returning to school or shifting to a nonprofit or finishing that manuscript; people simply rediscovering a sense of hope. These new life paths all build from Marina's own sense that it's never too late to change, that we must take action, that we are indeed "in this together. ~ Marina Keegan

Music's always part of my writing. I think all art is interconnected. You can't create or experience one without its influences bleeding into another. In my writing, music's mostly something that feeds my inspiration and mood while I'm writing, but it's also taught me how to score scenes and even novels. The rise and fall of the storyline echoes the flow of a good piece of music. ~ Charles De Lint

As a writer, I marinate, speculate, and hibernate. ~ Trisha Sugarek

To produce new works a writer will use a kind of sixth sense as well as the logical process. He'll enjoy playing with words, and that'll help his brain to relax and produce better ideas. His study is where he discovers order and finds hidden meanings in the words. He'll enjoy expanding the boundaries of what is feasible, and is possibly motivated more by the writing itself than by the hard cash that is the reward for writing. ~ Karl Wiggins

But, that was the beginning, though I didn't start writing until I was in high school and when I was in high school I really began to write poetry with great energy and enthusiasm. ~ Edward Hirsch

My earliest attempts at writing were when I was seven. I would sit at the piano and transcribe the songs I heard on the radio. I'd change little things in the music and write different lyrics. ~ Esperanza Spalding

I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world. ~ Sadako Sasaki

I write edgy, sexy teen romances, and that's what I'll continue to do. ~ Simone Elkeles

Writing a book is very personal. It's a very personal relationship. A book will start with something as simple as two men talking about work. That gets the fire going. Sustaining that fire is the hard work. It takes attention and empathy to hone the characters. ~ Ron Carlson

Whenever I'm on tour and I'm in my hotel room and I'm writing and playing my guitar, I go in the bathroom and I record whatever I'm writing in there. It's just what I love to do. ~ Colbie Caillat

She never claimed to be a writer, she simply described herself as a typist of stories waiting to come alive. ~ Margareth Stewart

I am the man who comes and goes between the bar and the telephone booth. Or, rather:that man is called 'I' and you know nothing else about him, just as this station is called only 'station' and beyond it there exists nothing except the unanswered signal of a telephone ringing in a dark room of a distant city. ~ Italo Calvino

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. ~ J.D. Salinger

I feel a bigger sense of fulfillment when writing a novel, and short stories are more about instant gratification. ~ Jami Attenberg

Relentless Savage is a great read! Dave Edlund's writing is on par with Clive Cussler and David Baldacci. Can't wait for the next one! ~ Dave Edlund

For me, personally, the point of writing is to connect me to this world, to my fellow humans. We are all miles apart. We have no real means of connecting except via language. And the deepest form of language is storytelling. ~ Matt Haig

In the diary you find proof that in situations which today would seem unbearable, you lived, looked around and wrote down observations, that this right hand moved then as it does today, when we may be wiser because we are able to look back upon our former condition, and for that very reason have got to admit the courage of our earlier striving in which we persisted even in sheer ignorance. ~ Franz Kafka

That was the old Ellen Gulden, the girl who would walk over her mother in golf shoes, who scared students away from writing seminars, who started work on Monday after graduating from Harvard with honors on a Thursday, who loved the moments in the office when she would look out at the impenetrable black of the East River, starred with the reflected lights of Queens, with only the cleaning crew for company, and think of her various superiors out at dinner parties and restaurants and her various similars out at downtown clubs or cheap but authentic places in Chinatown and say to herself, 'I'm getting ahead.' That Ellen Gulden, the one her boss suspected of using the dying-mother ploy to get more money or a better job title, would have covered every inch of [this datebook] with the frantic scribble of unexamined ambition. ~ Anna Quindlen

Erudition - that is, reading, writing, and arithmetic - is taught in the schools; but where is the more important quality, character, taught? Nowhere in particular. There is no authorized training for children in character. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

I am in the Master of Professional Writing program teaching Humor Writing, Literary and Dramatic. ~ Shelley Berman

The amount of writing that people do online is astonishing, and historically unprecedented. ~ Clive Thompson

I've found myself moved by letters and diaries in archives as well as trashy, summer blockbusters. It's possible to make a connection with any kind of writing - as long as the writing is good. ~ Sara Sheridan

I feel like I've grown up a bit. I'm a bit more confident, and I've been reading more, and I've had a little more time to myself. I went on this writing trip to gather my thoughts about where and who I am in this world, and why we're all here. ~ Imogen Heap

In my world," said Posy, "authors write stories, and the characters do whatever the author tells them. It's not like this--the characters don't have minds and lives of their own."
"How do you know this?" was Caris' surprising reply. The corner of her mouth turned up in a playful smile. "You do not see the characters when the pages of the book are shut. Is there never a time when you read a book for the second time and you notice something that you didn't remember from the first time? Or hear a story told, and every time it is told it grows and changes in the telling? Change is the nature of everything. ~ Ashlee Willis

I've always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that. ~ Bill Gates