Claire Tomalin Quotes

Publishing in a way doesn't have a lot to do with writing, and writing doesn't have a lot to do with publishing.

New York is the place where they bind books and write blurbs and arrange the publicity and print the galleys... But Chicago is the place where the book is lived out before it is bound and the song is sung before it is recorded.

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.

With everything that I've done with YouTube and podcasts for so many years, it's been: you can record it, edit, and then upload that day. With the book and documentary, it's been such a longer process.

Creating a book and creating a collection involve a lot of editing.

I spend about a year between novels.

To me, writing is the most fun. It's not always fun, but finally when you make it come out the way you want, it's then you can say, 'It's fun, boy.'

The writing process, it's too mysterious to try and describe.

When I'm in the studio, I'm strictly thinking about the beats, the rhymes and the song. The decision I make once the songs are created, and there's a barcode put on the package, and I'm out there in the street selling it, those decisions as a businessman are different than the creative decisions you make.

Only towards the end of this process are any of the chapters in fully readable condition, a state of affairs that used to alarm my wife. But Joan's got used to it.

I do a lot of editing and switching around and putting little pieces together to get the right mood and personality, and it takes me forever to get a song finished.

Filmmakers need to realize that their job isn't done when they lock picture. We must see our films through.

Writing itself does not know what it looks like while one is doing it, only when it's finished.

I was now ordered to have my writings copied, and put into the printer's hand.

I've produced a couple of films and really enjoyed starting it from the very beginning and seeing it all the way through to the end; that was very gratifying.

It's a very organic process, and it has a specific order to it. I love to write, and once you've written, then you arrange. After the arrangement, you record it, and then you tour it.

Novelists want to be published and need a publisher to decide to print 20,000 copies. So you need to entertain on some level. I want to reach out and connect.

YouTube is so quick and so instant, and you make a video, and you can upload it the same day, whereas with a book, you have to go through a lot of time and a lot of people and a lot of processes. So it was weird to sit down and work with other people on projects, because I'm so independent with YouTube.

Writing novels is the most exciting.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, quite apart from me.

I visited England immediately after I finished writing 'The Marrying Season,' before any editing or revisions.

Getting movies developed doesn't do me any good as a producer. It only does me good to get movies made.

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.