I know from an editor’s point of view or a publisher’s point of view it’s easier to slot me into a particular niche. But I know that I’d be bored unless I wrote a book that in some senses was a challenge.
The ouster of Jill Abramson as executive editor of ‘The New York Times’ sent shock waves through the media landscape. Reports that she was fired thanks in part to a soured relationship based on the ‘Times’ alleged sexist pay discrepancy only made those shock waves stronger.
I think there are probably a handful of real character actors in this business. The rest of us are recycling. So now I’m Sam Malone the editor. I’m Sam Malone the billionaire.
The essays in The Great Taos Bank Robbery were my project to win a Master of Arts degree in English when I quit being a newspaper editor and went back to college.
A good novel editor is invisible.
I was a good student – a geek, really – editor of the school paper, thought I was going to go to university.
It is unsound for an independent editor to be a financial contributor to any cause which would cause any type of special pleading.
One of my first jobs was at the Boston Globe. I worked in the sports department six months a year. When I was ready to graduate, the sports editor gave me a job as a schoolboy sports writer.
My time as editor has been overlapped by a crisis – a prolonged, labyrinthine, tragic, seemingly non-ending crisis – that involves the prehistory of 9/11, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, fraught histories between the United States and almost everyone.
In the world of book writing, an author really gets to have control over what he or she writes, which is why it is very satisfying. With the help of a great compatible editor, you really have something in the end you can call your own.
My job as an editor is to gently prod the attention of the audience to look at various parts of the frame. And that – I do that by manipulating how and where I cut and what succession of images I work with.
I can draw pencil lines to show something is moving, but if I’m writing, I struggle with how to write it. The boy ran down the hallway? The boy ran quickly down the hallway? The boy ran down the marble hallway? I agonize over the words. So my editor works very hard. I’m lucky to have her.
After I work with my editor to get the manuscript in good shape, I sketch and lay out a whole book loosely, usually in black and white. You learn things about your text when you have to think about pacing and page-turns.
I rewrite my books many times before submitting them, and after my editor takes a look I wind up rewriting some more! It’s a good thing I learned at an early age to keep on trying. Stick to it, and eventually you’ll get there.
The difference with doing a play is that you are in control. In film you are in the hands of the director and the editor and the producer.
I just fell into the job as a fashion editor at a teen magazine. I was there for two years, and I left there as a senior fashion editor at the age of 25.
You’ve got to have confidence and trust in your cast. You have to have confidence and trust in your director, in your editor. It’s such a team effort; I really think you have to pull yourself out of it and just trust. I think the number one thing you can do is just trust everyone around you.
I was the editor of the school newspaper and in drama club and choir, so I was not a popular girl in the traditional sense, but I think I was known for being relatively scathing.
I’m totally against the idea of a celebrity editor.
The greatest films ever made in our history were cut on film, and I’m tenaciously hanging on to the process. I just love going into an editing room and smelling the photochemistry and seeing my editor wearing mini-strands of film around his neck.
I always figured that I was one new editor away from unemployment.
Film is an editor’s medium. You can create very good raw material and they can make it horrible, or you can do not so well and they can make it beautiful. You don’t really know.
My wife is more important to me than anything in the world – including music. She’s a great editor and companion for all of my work and she’s a great writer herself. If you live with somebody who’s smart, they’ll affect your thinking more than anything.
I began using pseudonyms early in my career, when I was being paid a quarter a cent a word for my work, and when I had to write a lot to earn a living. Sometimes I had three or four stories in a single magazine without the editor knowing they were all by me.
With bad movies, I have this image in my head of the director and the editor in the editing room watching a scene that is not happening, looking at each other and saying, ‘Put some music in there.’
It’s always hard to write and get your words out there, to find an editor, a publisher – readers! – who are going to appreciate them.
Marxists are people whose insides are torn up day after day because they want to rule the world and no one will even publish their letter to the editor.
Radio stations provided a service. They weeded out the stuff that no one should ever have to even think about. Now, they made mistakes and they made mistakes with me even but, by and large, they provided a service. They were an editor.
When I first went up to see my editor, I was with my agent, and my editor said, ‘Well, what have you been doing all these years?’ And my agent said, ‘He’s been in recovery. From his childhood.’
For about a year, I worked for ‘Daily Kos.’ They were great. I mean, they allowed me to write whatever I was thinking about and feeling. ‘The New York Daily News’ saw it. They were making some pretty big changes. They hired a new editor in chief. I was his first hire.
Writing doesn’t come real easy to me. I couldn’t write a novel in a year. It wouldn’t be readable. I don’t let an editor even look at it until the second year, because it would just scare them. I just have to trust that all these scraps and dead-ends will find a way.
I don’t do any editing while we’re making the movie. I sit down and watch it all with my editor, we make longhand notes on pads, and then we begin our work.
When you see ‘editor’ on a book, there are many permutations of what that title can mean.
Really, anyone in the business who transitions into directing as a writer or editor or an actor or a cinematographer, at some point you have to kind of take a leap and say, ‘I’m committed to this.’
Jonathan Demme is a very sharp editor of his movies.
When I’m my own editor, there’s very little difference between the first draft and the final. I write what feels right to begin with. I rarely make any major changes.
I thought a book on miracles might be a great idea, but just because it’s a great idea doesn’t mean I’m supposed to do it. But my editor persisted, and eventually I thought, ‘He’s right. I should write this book.’
I have an editor in my head, that’s why I can’t read Harry Potter, because Rowling is such a lousy writer.
Most of my success, I feel, comes from being a good editor as opposed to a great writer.
Sometimes I had three or four stories in a single magazine without the editor knowing they were all by me.
Chiki Sarkar edited ‘Mrs Funnybones,’ and she is a ruthless but kind editor to work with. The only lesson I learnt during this process was to say, ‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ and re-write.
My editor’s main job is to cut down my worldbuilding. There’s so much fun stuff in there, you know?
As the editor at the Village Voice, I always tried to find writers of colour.
Journalists don’t have audiences – they have publics who can respond instantly and globally, positively or negatively, with a great deal more power than the traditional letters to the editor could wield.
In film, you’re so much in the hands and at the mercy of the editor, so sometimes it’s good to watch it just to see how it turns out – it can be so different than how you imagined it. But sometimes it’s better to just let it go for your own sense of self worth.
Deep Throat was a very unfortunate name given to the source by the managing editor of The Washington Post.
As we’ve grown ‘The Daily Muse’ and met contacts who want to collaborate with us, knowing who does what has helped us be clear on who we want our partners to connect with – and makes us look buttoned up, too. SEO firm? Talk to our COO. An editor from the ‘Huffington Post?’ Meet our Editor-in-Chief.
I’d be far too self-conscious and insecure if I suspected my editor might be a better novelist than I.
I wrote an article on a new Porsche for ‘Automobile Magazine.’ I knew the editor, and she asked me to write this article. So I’m more proud of that than anything.
I was a production assistant in the post department on ‘The Surreal Life.’ And it’s been reported before that I was an assistant editor on ‘The Surreal Life.’ That is not true.
After a series of jobs that I prefer not to recall, I was hired in the early eighties as fashion editor of ‘New York’ magazine.
An Editor becomes kind of your mother. You expect love and encouragement from an Editor.
The smartest thing I ever did as a writer was hire a retired conservation agent to blaze a hiking trail for me. It’s nothing fancy – just a narrow path that meanders for a little over a mile through the woods near my home. But that trail through the trees has become my therapist, my personal trainer, and my best editor.
