I do relate. How about you?
“While writing is like a joyful release, editing is a prison where the bars are my former intentions and the abusive warden my own neuroticism.” ~
Writing and Editing, 10
I have posted this quote before. I seem not to get enough of this critical insight . . .
“Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear.” ~
Writing and Editing, 9
“I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.” ~
The majority of us may not be using pencils – with our without erasers – for the processes of creative writing. Still . . . the message is loud and clear, do you not agree?
Writing and Editing, 8
“Edit your manuscript until your fingers bleed and you have memorized every last word. Then, when you are certain you are on the verge of insanity . . . edit one more time!”
~ , author of Cruelty to Innocents
Writing and Editing, 7
“Merely because you have got something to say that may be of interest to others does not free you from making all due effort to express that something in the best possible medium and form.” ~ Letter to Max E. Feckler (October 26, 1914), Jack London
Writing and Editing, 6
“Making love to me is amazing. Wait, I meant: making love, to me, is amazing. The absence of two little commas nearly transformed me into a sex god.
” ~ From Love Quotes for the Ages. Specifically Ages 19-91 by Dark Jar Tin Zoo
Writing and Editing, 5
I could not agree more with today’s quoted sentiment:
“A good editor doesn’t rewrite words, she rewires synapses.” ~
Writing and Editing, 4
“Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you have omitted every word that he can spare.” ~
Writing and Editing, 3
“When an editor works with an author, she cannot help seeing into the medicine cabinet of his soul. All the terrible emotions, the desire for vindications, the paranoia, and the projection are bottled in there, along with all the excesses of envy, desire for revenge, all the hypochondriacal responses, rituals, defenses, and the twin obsessions with sex and money. In other words, the stuff of great books.” ~ Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees
Writing and Editing, 2
“Put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.” ~ Casual Chance (1964), Colette