Editing Skills Quotes

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

I'm close to my audience. I think I have more tools in my box than other guys who might try it. Also, I know how to do this stuff. I know how to write and shoot and edit. I'm technically adept and that helped with the website. You need a big skill set.

I started writing poems, and when I first tried prose, I wrote bad articles and essays and columns, and I didn't have a handle on it. I didn't go to a school that really taught you how to write that stuff.

Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.

The writer who cannot sometimes throw away a thought about which another man would have written dissertations, without worry whether or not the reader will find it, will never become a great writer.

But for me, being an editor I've been an editor of all kinds of books being an editor of poetry has been the way in which I could give a crucial part of my time to what I love most.

Jonathan Demme is a very sharp editor of his movies.

In terms of my career, it began in earnest when I was living in Boston. I started doing my own films, working initially as an editor and editing assistant - briefly - at WGBH, as an editor on other people's movies, trying to get some experience under my belt, but eventually just doing my own short films, doing them my way.

I really thought I wanted to be a lawyer, but then I had an epiphany when I was in law school and dropped out. I'd always been a journalism junkie, but I'd never had confidence to think that I could actually edit or write the stories.

My first cut was three hours and 17 minutes. And then I just became very shrewd about the editing.

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

It is important for poets and writers today to know their shortcomings, and be able to edit their own work as well as reject them if they are not up to their standards.

I used to make little movies when I was younger. I'd make my friends be in them and then edit them.

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

After so many books and so many years of writing, I have a good idea of my strengths and weaknesses. I love the process of writing and, if I allowed myself, I would write far too much every day. One weakness which I've struggled to overcome is my tendency to having my characters ruminate for pages.

The number one secret of being a successful writer is this: marry an English major.

A very good editor is almost a collaborator.

I hope I can become a good enough filmmaker where I can take a script that I'm not 'heart and soul' into, but I could still make something really great out of it.

You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

If we make mistakes in our first compositions and do not know them, we may not amend them.

Most of my success, I feel, comes from being a good editor as opposed to a great writer.

People think that writing is writing, but actually writing is editing. Otherwise, you're just taking notes

I stayed at 'Cosmo' well beyond my internship, moving up the ranks over some 15 years to become books editor, then brand director, then editor-at-large - editing everything from an excerpt of Gore Vidal's memoir to writing some of those juicy cover lines myself.

The only advice I can give is to surround yourself with people who are friends and people who believe in you and your material and who are going to help you take it to the next level. It doesn't mean you don't listen to criticism, but you listen to it and edit it, and you figure out what you can take.

An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.