Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Editing-a necessary evil


Stanfordism# 3
Editing, for me, feels a lot like a root canal. It's necessary, and it's healthy, but it's excruciatingly painful for the one who has to endure it.

Here is what others have to say about editing:

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

Editing Hemingway was like wrestling with a god.”
Tom Jenks

Whenever I talk to kids about writing and tell them it's the rewriting I enjoy most, they groan. I guess if you're in school, rewriting means copying your papers over. But to me, rewriting is the most exciting part of the process. When I'm rewriting, I feel most creative. I've got all the pieces to the puzzle and now I get to put them together. I go through four or five drafts of each book. (When I was writing Summer Sisters I went through twenty drafts!)
Judy Blume

"When you write you tell yourself a story. When you rewrite you take out everything that is NOT the story."
Stephen King

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