Greg Rucka Quotes

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

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.

Though I revise constantly as I write, I will usually revise much of the work again after I've reached the ending.

Even after the text is written, there are a tremendous number of stages along the way to the finished book. If a publisher cares about the finished product, none of them will be omitted.

Most of my books have caused distribution and printing problems in the past.

I tend to overwrite; I need a good editor.

It generally takes me about nine months from the point the book is conceived to the point my editor sends it off to be typeset.

We see them when they come to New York. They stay at my wife's apartment. We have quite a correspondence with them at all times. They play a very important role, the authors in the firm, because so much of the material we publish is suggested by them.

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

Five people read my work before its ready for publication, and I solicit opinions from all of them: my wife, my agent, my editor, and my parents.

Everybody needs an editor.

The most painstaking phase comes when the manuscript is set in 'type' for the first time and the first proofs of the book are printed. These initial copies are called first-pass proofs or galleys.

No book I publish will be perfect, but I need to feel I've taken it as far as I can.

When you see 'editor' on a book, there are many permutations of what that title can mean.

Editing is the most companionable form of education.

I've always equated the writing process with editing, sort of like when I get through editing the movie, that's like my last draft of the screenplay.

The draft that finally goes to my editor doesn't get into her hands until I have read it out loud innumerable times - sometimes into a tape recorder - to make sure that it sounds right.

Somewhere along the line, I realized that I liked telling stories, and I decided that I would try writing. Ten years later, I finally got a book published. It was hard. I had no skills. I knew nothing about the business of getting published. So I had to keep working at it.

I think with one exception I've never changed an opening sentence after a book was completed.

Editing is the same as quarrelling with writers - same thing exactly.

I can get really obsessive. I like writing many drafts, and I try not to because it is very time-consuming, especially when you're working on a novel. But I do like to take a story and reorder it, put things in different places. This allows me to see things in a new and sometimes surprising way.

The first version of The Beautiful Room Is Empty was the first mss. I'd ever submitted to New York editors.

When people start writing there is this idea that you have to get everything right first time, every sentence has to be perfect, every paragraph has to be perfect, every chapter has to be perfect, but what you're doing is not any kind of public show, until you're ready for it.

I just wrote a book, but don't go out and buy it yet, because I don't think it's finished yet.

Ever since 'Strange Heaven,' I haven't really reread my old work. Not so much because I don't like the writer I was, or because I find flaws in the writing, but more because I get so burnt out on a novel once I've finished writing, revising, editing and copy editing it that I genuinely never want to look at it again after it's gone to press.