Charles Bukowski Quotes

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

For every issue, I send four pages of finished marginals and they select the ones they need.

I'm not a writer who refuses to talk about a book until I've finished.

Having your book edited is like watching your cat being operated on. It's uncomfortable and someone is probably going to get hurt. Most likely the cat. But in the end, things work out for the best and your cat is better it. And then your cat gets released in hardcover, and you have to read all of his reviews.

You don't sit up in a cave and write the Great American Novel and know it is utterly superb, and then throw it page by page into the fire. You just don't do that. You send it out. You have to send it out.

My only claim to fame, if I have one, is that I'm an editor.

Don't talk about writing. Write. Don't show unfinished work to anyone. Don't show finished work to non-writers. Get your opinions, not from friends and family, but by sending your work out to editors. An endless stream of rejection slips means you need to learn more. So learn more.

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.

An author writes a book, and that's the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

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

No one writes a great book every time out, or even a good book.

The original version of 'The White Mountains' was probably just about worth publishing.

This is not a screenplay. I don't do twenty drafts. I'm not going to show this to you until it's published or accepted for publication. You can make whatever suggestions you want, but I probably will ignore them entirely.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

I don't reread my books after they're published, because it's agony.

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.

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

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

I don't think anybody submits their first story and sells right away.

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.

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.

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

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.

I have only one bit of advice to the beginning writer: Be sure your novel is read by Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate, and infinitely better looking.