Editors Quotes - Page 20

• The editor sat in his sanctum, his countenance furrowed with care, His mind at the bottom of business, his feet at the top of a chair, His chair-arm an elbow supporting, his right hand upholding his head, His eyes on his dusty old table, with different documents spread.

  Will Carleton

  Eye, Hands, Feet

  Will Carleton (1873). “Farm Ballads”, p.127

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• An editor is bound to avoid the meshes of the law, which are always infinitely more costly to companies, or things, or institutions, than they are to individuals.

  Anthony Trollope

  Law, Individual, Mesh

  Anthony Trollope (185?). “Phineas Redux”, p.197

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• One of the things I like about publishing is that you don't promote the editor - you promote the book and the author.

  Jackie Kennedy

  Book, Publishing

  "Publishers Weekly" Magazine, April 19, 1993.

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• If anyone ever wonders why there's nothing coming from me, it's not my fault. I'm doing the work. No, I haven't deteriorated or gone insane. Suddenly, I just can't get anything into print. And apparently I'm not alone in this. There are people of very high standing, authors who are having problems. So I have been told. In my own case, the more disturbing element is the editor-in-chief who said to me, "I think this book is terrific. It ought to be in print. I can't publish it -- I've been told I mustn't." The indication is that I'm not writing what people want to read, but I never did.

  Tanith Lee

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  "Tanith Lee : Love & Death & Publishers", www.locusmag.com. April 1998.

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• To me, Clark Kent in a phone booth and Houdini in a packing crate, they were one and the same thing," he would learnedly expound at WonderCon or Angoulême or to the editor of The Comics Journal . "You weren't the same person when you came out as when you went in.

  Michael Chabon

  Phones, Houdini, Packing

  Michael Chabon (2012). “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (with bonus content): A Novel”, p.15, Random House

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• I try to be a lot of things for the authors I work with - a careful reader, a helpful friend who also happens to be an experienced writer, a thoughtful editor, and a creative midwife.

  Kevin Sampsell

  Thoughtful, Creative, Trying

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Being an editor has been a source of great satisfaction, but writing is the thing I truly love.

  Bill Keller

  Writing, Satisfaction, Source

  Interview with Scott Raab, www.esquire.com. June 8, 2011.

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• First of all I have to ask myself what am I trying to say and who am I trying to tell the story to. So if it's just 300 words going in the Independent it's very much where, what, who and when - fantastic. If there's a little bit more scope, if I've been given 1500 words by the sports editor, and I can have a little bit of fun, then I need to maybe entertain, include some different stuff.

  Steve Bunce

  Sports, Fun, Independent

  Source: www.bbc.co.uk

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• I don't tend to redraft, I will try to tidy it up, but basically I feel what I write down first has got the impetus, it may be clumsy, it may be repetitive, but a good editor can take that out. That first writing bit is the best thing you will do.

  Gerald Seymour

  Writing, Trying, May

  Source: www.theguardian.com

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• Believe it or not, I don't collaborate with women, though my agent and editor are both females. For the most part, they do little editing on my characters.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Believe, Character, Editing

  "Nicholas Sparks, Author of 'Nights in Rodanthe' and 'The Notebook'". Live Q&As, www.washingtonpost.com. September 17, 2008.

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• I never had a plan, except to write. I love what I do, and have from the beginning. Loving what you do makes it a lot easier to work, every day, to face the tough spots and heel in for the long haul. Nothing against plans; they work for some people. But for me, if I'd been planning, worrying about numbers, trying to micro-manage my career, I wouldn't have focused on the writing. If you don't write, you're not read. If you're not read, you don't sell. So that's my Master Plan, I guess. Write the books, let the agent agent, the editor edit, the publisher publish.

  Nora Roberts

  Book, Writing, Loving What You Do

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• Who should regulate the media? Who should control the press? The commentariat agonises, as if the choice was between state control through some autocratic press law or a new Press Complaints Commission redecorated with false teeth. But there is another way. Let journalists regulate themselves.... Let's have a little democracy in the media. Even in the Murdoch papers, the number of journalists who are irretrievably lawless and callous is quite small. Most of the disasters at the News of the World happened because its editors treated their staff in the style of Muammar Gaddafi.

  Neal Ascherson

  Numbers, Media, Law

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• Show me a contented newspaper editor and I will show you a bad newspaper.

  Arthur Christiansen

  Newspapers, Show Me, Shows

  1961 Headlines all my Life, ch.15.

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• The initial spark usually has something to do with panic -- I'm due to turn in a story to a workshop or an editor. It's a terrible working method.

  Kelly Link

  Panic, Sparks, Stories

  "Kelly Link, Words by Flashlight". Interview with Lauren McLaughlin, www.sensesfive.com. June 7, 2006.

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• Book publishing was never a heaven "run by editors", and it is by no means today a hell "run by accountants." If our "sole interest" was "instant profit," not only would we never do any number of the things we actually do every day, we probably wouldn't be in book publishing at all.

  Patrick Nielsen Hayden

  Running, Book, Mean

  "A simple, mildly incredulous philippic". nielsenhayden.com. April 7, 2010.

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• The aim of the scholarly editor is not to produce the the easiest text for the reader, but to get as near as he can to the text of the author.

  Frederic G. Kenyon

  Produce, Aim, Scholarly

  "The Story Of The Bible" by Frederic G. Kenyon. Ch. X, The Position Today, p. 142, 1949.

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• If a good editor will let me tell my story with the right artist, I'm happy.

  Brian K. Vaughan

  Artist, Stories, Let Me

  "AICN COMICS!! @$$Holes Interview With Brian K. Vaughan!!". Ain't It Cool interview, www.aintitcool.com. June 22, 2004.

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• That's also part of having great editors -- they can sort of be honest with you and say, "I see where you're headed with this, but I don't think it's there yet. Dig deeper, babe, and come back with something more." And that's what you do, you dig waaaaaaaay down and you walk around the block eight million times and then you have it -- shazam! And it all comes together in something soooo much better than you thought you were capable of.

  Victoria Laurie

  Block, Writing, Thinking

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• It goes to show you how we in the press so often miss the big stories that are right under our noses. There is a famous journalistic legend about the time a young reporter covered the Johnstown flood of 1889. The kid wrote: God sat on a hillside overlooking Johnstown today and looked at the destruction He had wrought. His editor cabled back: Forget flood. Interview God.

  Roger Ebert

  Kids, Missing, Stories

  Roger Ebert (2013). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2007”, p.297, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• All the other editors at DC never gave me a moment's time. They would take the thing and give me a check and say, 'I'll see you in two weeks.' They never gave any kind of encouragement or information. They were very competitive with each other. They didn't want to teach an artist and then lose him to some other editor.

  John Romita, Sr.

  Encouragement, Book, Artist

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• Almost everyone working in mainstream comics started off as a starry-eyed kid reading and loving comics. We're all fans, and that's great. But when we start working on company-owned comics professionally, we have to think like storytellers instead of fans. Editors aren't looking to hire the biggest fans of the characters. They're looking to hire the best creators with the best ideas.

  Greg Pak

  Book, Reading, Character

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• I'm optimistic, though. Now, with the Arab Spring, I think that people in the region are beginning to overturn some of these clichés, and Western editors are starting to catch up. We're seeing some exceptions to the stereotypes, like Elizabeth Rubin's great piecein Newsweek, "The Feminists in the Middle of Tahrir Square." But an article like that shouldn't be the exception. It should be the rule.

  Annia Ciezadlo

  Spring, Optimistic, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I pay editors. I never ask friends or colleagues to work for free.

  Rigoberto Gonzalez

  Pay, Colleagues, Asks

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I think having a coach or an editor or whatever the novelist's producer is could help. If you finish a chapter and you turn it in to him, and he or she said, "That was pretty good, it might go better." Maybe that's what I'll try to find.

  Craig Finn

  Thinking, Trying, Novelists

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I can be a fairly hands-on editor, and when I'm editing someone I feel intensely invested in that writer and her work. I love helping to shape a book, and I feel very privileged to get to do that with writers I'm excited about. I think doing that work for the past six years has changed me, and it better prepared me for the questions and suggestions.

  Danielle Dutton

  Book, Past, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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