When I was in college, I wanted to be editor of ‘Reason’ when I grew up. It was an impractical ambition, especially since the magazine was located in Santa Barbara, way off any journalist’s normal career path.
Onstage I’m the one in control – I’m not at the mercy of how an editor chooses to put the scene together later. I can do things onstage that I would never do in real life. It’s very freeing.
I always think, if I were an editor, and I was invited to a show, and I would have to wait for 45 minutes in the dark or in the cold or in the heat, maybe I would like to have a fresh drink or a piece of chocolate.
You act in a movie, and at the end of the day, the director and editor decide what your performance is.
By the time I came to the States, I really understood how a magazine works. I came to ‘Vogue’ as creative director, and three years later I went back to London to be editor in chief of British ‘Vogue.’
When I was in college, I was the editor of the literary magazine and insisted neither the editors nor the writers be specifically identified-only our student numbers appeared on the title page. I love that idea and still do.
I’m crazy lucky. I was trying to be a filmmaker. I was doing Second City classes as a way to be creative. I was a PA for a long time. I was working as an assistant editor on ‘Iron Chef America’ when I got ‘SNL.’ It was one of those situations where you’re concentrating in one thing and the peripheral thing popped.
I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn’t really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.
Once you’ve worked as a writer and editor in the world of social media for a decade, the way I have, you start to notice patterns.
I co-founded ‘bOING bOING’ magazine and the ‘Boing Boing Blog’ and was an editor at ‘Wired’ from 1993-1998.
I’m a writer first and an editor second… or maybe third or even fourth. Successful editing requires a very specific set of skills, and I don’t claim to have all of them at my command.
Asking myself, ‘Is this any good?’ is pointless. It just slows down my writing, and I can’t tell anyway. It’s always the paragraphs I loved most, the ones I tenderly polished and re-read with pride, that my editor will suggest cutting.
The fashion editor as it used to be has changed. Now you have to wear many hats, and whoever tells you differently is wrong. Now you’re on TV, whether you want it or not.
On my ‘Mickey’ video, I was the director, producer, choreographer, editor, singer – everything.
I was struggling, I was hungry, I was a freelance copy editor but had very little work.
I gave my archive to Emory University because there’s a really dear friend who teaches there, Rudolph Byrd, and he’s the editor.
I always swore I would never write a book. But I read Clare Balding’s and it was really interesting and so prettily written and lovely and not too revealing. I went to her book launch and met her editor who said ‘why don’t you think about it? You can do it however you want, based on your characters or you.’
I wear two hats at the ‘Wall Street Journal’: one as a columnist, the other as the editor responsible for our editorial pages in Asia and Europe.
My first novel, ‘Housekeeping,’ was accepted by the first agent who read it, and bought by the first editor who read it. In general, my experience with publication has been gentle and gratifying.
Although being economics editor sounds impressive, it does not mean I actually edit anything. It mainly reflects two decades of title-inflation at the BBC, which has given ever more status to senior reporters, presumably because it is cheaper to do that than to offer higher pay.
If I weren’t performing, I’d be a beauty editor or a therapist. I love creativity, but I also love to help others. My mother was a hairstylist, and they listen to everyone’s problems – like a beauty therapist!
The idea that Veronica Wadley has no artistic credibility is just crazy. She has a strong reputation and when she was editor of the ‘Evening Standard’ she was very highly regarded in the arts sector.
The one thing that’s always been the center of my political thinking – and it goes back to when I was 19 and editor of my college paper – is an abhorrence of the extreme.
After I’ve sent my revised draft to my agent and editor, they suggest more improvement sand again, this revision phase can take anywhere from a few hours to a few months.
I had always loved to write and my mom was my editor for my school papers.
I’ve been a teacher at the college level, in composition mostly, and I’ve been an editor on magazines.
I was asked by an editor to consider writing something about an American inventor. I asked him if he knew who invented the computer. He said he didn’t. In that case, I told him, I should write a book about John Vincent Atanasoff.
Photography belongs to a fraternity of its own. I was young and enthusiastic and wanted to take good pictures to show the other photographers. That, and the professional pride of convincing an editor that I was the man to go somewhere, were the most important things to me.
What’s more important than who’s going to be the first black manager is who’s going to be the first black sports editor of the New York Times.
Luckily, I’m not a stand-up comedian, so I don’t get the fear of standing on stage in front of a dead audience: my humorous pieces have to make it past an editor before they get exposed to the public.
‘Something Borrowed’ was initially titled ‘Rolling the Dice,’ but my editor said it sounded like a men’s gambling memoir.
I was a book editor for nine years. I’m familiar with the opposite experience, bracing myself for the likelihood that no one would want to publish my book.
Everybody needs an editor.
In fact, I spent 25 years as a reporter, swearing I would never become an editor. Sitting at a desk, watching other people go out and find the story, and then fussing with other people’s words – I just didn’t get the appeal of that.
You should never rely on interviews with musicians as being factual. Most of them are mangled and even have made up stuff in them, that is to say, made up stuff by the writer or editor.
I tend to overwrite; I need a good editor.
I’m trying to work only with established, respected directors. I took a lot of bad scripts and worked for a lot of lazy directors, and it was discouraging to go to the screenings and see that the director had added nothing, the editor had added nothing, there was nothing to see.
A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.
My aunt was Frances Hodges, who in the Fifties was the editor of ‘Seventeen’ and later one of the creators of ‘Mademoiselle.’ She was my Auntie Mame; she loved culture. She was a Quaker, but she became a milliner against all Quaker logic – they feel that fashion and art are vanities – because she loved fashion.
Dullness is the only crime for which an editor ought to be hung.
I was a copy editor. I loved it. I love grammar. I’m obsessed. I was a bartender. I worked in a cafe. I was a dog walker. I was a babysitter. I was a tutor. Once I was asked to half-babysit, half-bartend.
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 started creative writing classes at Aberdeen Central Library, and the writer-in-residence there, Todd McEwen, encouraged me a great deal. He showed my stories to his editor, and I thought that was just what happened to everyone who took his classes!
I’m just loving BlueGriffon Editor! XML, HTML5, CSS, ARIA, SVGEdit all built in.
My training as a journalist was invaluable: when I worked on ‘The Daily Express,’ the editor would often ask for 1000 words within a couple of hours. I could not say I was not inspired. I had to get on with it.
I had a background in theater as an actor, and then a photographer, and then as an experimental filmmaker and editor.
The truth is, you have about three paragraphs in a short story, three pages in a novel, to capture that editor’s attention enough for her to finish your story.
As a painter you’re responsible yourself, 100 percent. In film, you have the editor, the director, the other actors. It has the advantage of not being solitary.
I can’t wait for the day when it is no longer newsworthy that a woman is appointed editor of a newspaper.
A literary journal is intended to connect writer with reader; the role of the editor is to mediate.
The great film editor is not a cutter, he’s a storyteller, right?
The only people who usually have input on my writing are my wife and my editor. I’m not in conversation with anyone except the people I report on and the people I work with.
Assange is not a ‘journalist’ any more than the ‘editor’ of al-Qaeda’s new English-language magazine ‘Inspire’ is a ‘journalist.’ He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.
You could be an 18-year-old girl in Tokyo wondering how you could ever break into fashion or beauty, so you follow your favourite designer or editor, see what their day comprises, where they go, who they meet, how they do it… If I were setting up my own label today, I would definitely do it through Instagram.
