I bristle at the implication that only with the help of a Big Six editor does a novel lose its self-indulgent aspects. Before the advent of self-publishing, there were plenty of self-indulgent novels on the shelves.
An early editor characterized my books as ‘romantic comedy for intelligent adults.’ I think people see them as funny but kind. I don’t set out to write either funny or kind, but it’s a voice they like, quirky like me… And you know, people like happy endings.
I miss particularly the managing editor role on the ‘Evening News.’
I love, love, love live performance. It’s like walking a tightrope without the net. You better be on point; you better be balanced. You better have rehearsed it and seen it from every vantage so you can do what you do best. I do love film because it’s up front in your face, and hopefully you’ve got a great editor.
My dad was an editor and a writer, and that’s really where I would have liked to have gone. But the genetic link was not intact there, so I wound up going into business. But I love to write, still. I’m not a great writer, but I enjoy it.
I had a brief period of questioning whether I should perhaps adopt a child. And my New Yorker editor, Henry Finder, was horrified by the notion.
I publish my own books, so there isn’t a certain editor I owe the book to at a publishing house.
I finished the rough draft of ‘Crying in H Mart’ in July of 2020. My editor had it for five to six months, so I was free from it for a little while. I decided to take that time to start working on a new album.
I remember the first time I spoke to an editor. I thought I’d be sick, I was so nervous. The first time I spoke to a large group at a conference, I had the jitters for days beforehand.
Always point your finger at the chest of the person with whom you are being photographed. You will appear dynamic. And no photo editor can crop you from the picture.
I believe an editor’s job is to help a writer sound like himself or herself.
I realise I am stepping into the shoes of a hugely respected editor in the shape of Alexandra Shulman, someone who has chosen to leave at the top of their game with a legacy of 25 years of success.
I’ve seen people who stink, but the film editor shows them just where they didn’t stink. But if you’re empty and manipulative on stage, it’s clear.
I’m a wonderful editor. That’s what I do best. I know exactly what I want. If I have to decide whether to wear the red dress or the blue dress or what should I have said, I am constantly changing my mind.
I thought I would write non-fiction. I thought I would enter the New York literary scene as copy editor, work my way up, and then write my own books.
Movies are an editor’s medium.
A specific editor in a specific place likes the book, and you’re in. A different editor on a different day goes, ‘Oh, this isn’t for me’, or doesn’t even look at it, and that’s it.
I worked on ‘Always and Forever, Lara Jean’ for a few months before I breathed a word of it my editor or agent.
I was an English major at the University of Minnesota, and I was very shy, which many people misinterpreted as intelligence. On the basis of that wrong impression, I became the editor of the campus literary magazine.
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.
I just happened to see an ad saying ‘Willing to train an assistant editor,’ and I learned enough from that to go to NYU for just one summer course. That’s all that I could afford.
I have years of saying ideas that are not listened to. Then, weeks after, of producers finding out that I was right when some other guy comes in and says it. Sometimes I just tell my idea to my editor or to some other guy with maybe gray hair to share it, and then it’s brilliant!
As an editor, I read Charlotte Rogan’s amazing debut novel, ‘The Lifeboat,’ when it was still in manuscript. I read it in one night, and I really wanted my company to publish it, but we lost it to another house. It’s such a wonderful combination of beautiful writing and suspenseful storytelling.
I’m impressed with how ‘Newsweek’s’ outstanding staff has continued to put out a lively, well-informed magazine after the departure of their tireless editor, Jon Meacham.
A good editor understands what you’re talking and writing about and doesn’t meddle too much.
Screen is satisfying because it’s so technical and mysterious. It’s like playing roulette: you get a script, you think it’s either great or naff, but you have no idea how it will really turn out. On stage, you are your own editor – and you get brief moments of grace, where suddenly you feel free.
In 2004, Lawrence Wright wrote in the ‘New Yorker’ about ‘The Kingdom of Silence,’ where a massive sewer project in Jeddah was really a series of manhole covers across the city with no actual pipes underneath. I, as the editor of a major paper at the time, can say that we all knew – and we never reported on it.
My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh.
I’ve always been drawn more to film. But ‘Bloodline,’ to me, feels like a 13-hour piece of cinema. And the great thing about Netflix is you get to be almost like an editor. You choose how much of the narrative you want to watch at a time, which makes you complicit in the story.
I tried a few grad school programs because I didn’t know how to make it… Eventually, I was desperate for a job, and there was a new newspaper opening up in Washington, D.C., called ‘The Hill.’ Even though my interest in politics wasn’t huge, they gave me a job as a copy editor.
I don’t have an editor on Twitter. I have an editor in the paper, and so I tend to be less precise in 140 characters and sometimes I leave people confused as to my meaning. And then I make the mistake of engaging and trying to explain it, which just leads you down a rabbit hole.
I was the executive editor on a little magazine called Greek Accent, whose only claim to fame is that its art director went on to be the art director of Discover for many years.
In live-action, writing, production, and editing happen in discrete stages. In animation, they overlap – happening simultaneously. This allows a real dialogue to occur between the writer, the director, the actors, and the editor, and it makes the writing process a lot more collaborative and a lot less lonely.
An editor is an accomplice, looking in from the outside. That objective view is essential. We don’t write in a vacuum, and we don’t publish in a vacuum.
Definitely there has been a decline in journalism. It wasn’t there at all when you fought an election, won, lost and came back to become an editor. That must have been the golden age of journalism.
I had always been quiet and studious in school. I was the high school editor of the newspaper.
The relationship between a director and an editor in documentaries is so important.
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.
I was the girl who did everybody’s homework, but I was also, like, student council president and yearbook editor and, like, all-around overachiever. Like, I’m disabled, but I can do anything.
I think about my editor when I write. She’s a good friend, too.
The average citizen in this county has more intelligence and sense in his little finger than the editor of ‘The New York Times’ has in his whole head.
I am thrilled to become international ‘Vogue’ editor at Conde Nast International, which has a real commitment to journalistic excellence, and to have the opportunity to write for a wider global audience through the ‘Vogue’ websites.
I was really the first-line editor of the ‘House of Night’ series. I didn’t write that much of the story, and I didn’t know what was happening until my mom finished the book and sent it to me because I wanted to read it with fresh eyes as a general reader would.
Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
I used to be an editor and I was editing young adult series. I didn’t really like the books that I was reading, so I decided that I would write a book about something I’d want to read if I was 16. It turned into a Cinderella story… I developed a proposal and the characters of ‘Gossip Girl’ for my job.
In a world where everyone is a publisher, no one is an editor. And that is the danger that we face today.
Each movie I make has its own heroes, and the two heroes for me in ‘Arrival’ are Amy Adams and Joe Walker, the editor. We worked very, very hard, and it was, by far, the longest editing process.
Asking the government to fix our economy is like asking an editor to fix a movie, but in this case, the editor’s not even of one mind.
My dad was a news editor for a Brazilian news station, and they had offices in New York and London.
I believe every editor should stand to edit. That’s just my particular soapbox. Some things are so delicate and depend on such fine, delicate work. One frame in one direction or another can make such a difference and it is, in that, like brain surgery.
From 1961 to 1964, I was fortunate enough to work at a think tank in the Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago. As a writer and editor, I reported in a publication about the thinkers. Our offices were in a former mansion; I worked in what had been the ballroom. As I sat typing my copy, I imagined the dancers waltzing.
