W. G. Sebald Quotes

Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place.

Like all editors, I assume, I'm a reactor.

The writer marks the changes he wants to make, while a proofreader also goes through the galley, checking it page-by-page against the manuscript. Once all these changes are identified, a second-pass proof is made, and this, too, gets sent to the author and the proofreader, and the process begins anew.

Every book has mistakes in them, every one. There's never been a book published without mistakes.

I should mention something that nobody ever thinks about, but proofreading takes a lot of time. After you write something, there are these proofs that keep coming, and there's this panicky feeling that 'This is me and I must make it better.'

I always market research my books before I hand them in by showing them to five or six close friends who I trust to be honest with me, so they are very heavily re-written already.

I have a problem with blogs - all the best writers benefit from edits.

If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.

The life of an editor is not a glamorous one. You're a fixer; you make things better.

My self-editing process is intense.

After my husband spell-checks one of my manuscripts, my editor says, 'It's been Normanized.'

I always read what I write out loud, and I did that long before any radio thing. My editor finds that unusual.

I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You're grateful for these different chances.

I read what I write over and over and make corrections and improvements, until I reach the conclusion that the material deserves to stand on its own.

Editing is simply the application of the common sense of any good reader. That's why, to be an editor, you have to be a reader. It's the number one qualification.

I tend to overwrite; I need a good editor.

And the most important thing you can do is learn to edit yourself. And then go back and rewrite.

I draft quickly and then revise, a lot.

I'm constantly revising. Once the book is written and typed, I go through the entire draft again.

Once you've finished typing and moving text around and everything else, you have to leave it alone for a while. You do that to see if it stands up, to see if all the loose edges have been trimmed, if it makes sense, if it's consistent, what shape it really has. You can't tell that while you're working on it.

When you're editing, you want to be the perfect appreciator, not another writer.

It's funny because you know the novel process: you get the drafts, you get the galley, and then you get the galley proofs. You have opportunities to change things all along. But the further along in the process you go, the more careful you have to be in making those changes, and the smaller the changes have to be.

My toughest criticism usually comes from myself. As my editor can attest to, I'm never done tweaking a book until the production department has to rip it from my hands!

There are two kinds of editors, those who correct your copy and those who say it's wonderful.

Everybody needs an editor.