Quotes on editing, editors, writing, writers . . .

[_Lynn_]

I have asked Laurel to cancel my account because I know I don't belong here. I offer no assistance but only controversy.

And if she's content to allow me to do so, then so be it. I've done what I can. But if she doesn't then here I shall remain with her desire.

I think she feels her mods are out of control and and wishes to reign them in.

Don't know. It's a theory.

Reminder:

The Editor’s Forum is for authors and editors to discuss issues related to editing stories. People are forgetting this. It's not a place for personal arguments, attacks, or discussions not related to editing stories

 

[_Lynn_]

All words are pegs to hang ideas on. ~~ Henry Ward Beecher (1887)

 

[LadyCibelle]

"Read your own compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out." - Samuel Johnson

 

[LadyCibelle]

One of my favourite quote

"The work was like peeling an onion. The outer skin came off with difficulty... but in no time you'd be down to its innards, tears streaming from your eyes as more and more beautiful reductions became possible." - Edward Blishen

 

[AsylumSeeker]

Deleted as per Literotica Forum Guidelines #11

Please stay on topic.

I'd appreciate knowing, or rather be educated of the supposed rule you have provided.

Aw shit. Let's just run afoul of the web.

 

[_Lynn_]

I'd appreciate knowing, or rather be educated of the supposed rule you have provided.

Aw shit. Let's just run afoul of the web.

The link is in her post.

 

[_Lynn_]

You can stroke people with words ~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald (1945)

 

[StephenMiletus]

I have always been inclined to the single-point-of-view story, even years ago before I went to Bread Loaf and learned these technical distinctions. -- L. Sprague de Camp, "Science-Fiction Handbook" (1953)

 

[_Lynn_]

Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it. ~~ Leon Trotsky (1960)

 

[LadyCibelle]

"Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of bar-room vernacular, that is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive." -- Raymond Chandler

 

[sr71plt]

And I'll bet the proofreader came back by pointing out that it should be "more-or-less literate" and that "barroom" is one word, without a hyphen.

 

[LadyCibelle]

And I'll bet the proofreader came back by pointing out that it should be "more-or-less literate" and that "barroom" is one word, without a hyphen.

Hey don't fault me, I'm just the messenger.

 

[_Lynn_]

The grate art in writing well, iz tew kno when tew stop. ~~ Josh Billings (His Sayings, 1867)

 

[elfin_odalisque]

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

Robert Frost

Useful for story feedback?

 

[PennLady]

Since this entire structure, dimly illumined in one’s mind, can be compared to a painting, and since you do not have to work gradually from left to right for its proper perception, I may direct my flashlight at any part or particle of the picture when setting it down in writing. I do not begin my novel at the beginning, I do not reach chapter three before I reach chapter four, I do not go dutifully from one page to the next, in consecutive order; no, I pick out a bit here and a bit there, till I have filled all the gaps on paper. This is why I like writing my stories and novels on index cards, numbering them later when the whole set is complete. Every card is rewritten many times. About three cards make one typewritten page, and when finally I feel that the conceived picture has been copied by me as faithfully as physically possible—a few vacant lots always remain, alas—then I dictate the novel to my wife who types it out in triplicate.

-- Vladimir Nabokov, Playboy interview, January 1964

Complete interview here.

 

[sr71plt]

Liked that, PennLady. I think that comment that he doesn't begin his novel at "the beginning," is particularly useful advice for writers. When you start in the middle of action farther along the line, you immediately engage your reader's mind, helping the reader to connect and get inside the work. Any necessary background is filtered in as the story moves along--and where it becomes the most useful. One of the primary pieces of feedback acquisitions editors give to writers who have submitted manuscripts for consideration is, "I'd lop off the first three chapters and start where you start chapter four."

Likewise, I think, you don't have to end your story for the characters for all time either. One of my current Winter Holiday contest stories is still being raked over the coals for not literally carrying through to an ending that I thought was a pretty obvious conclusion readers could extrapolate to on their own--and that I didn't literally go to, because it wasn't the point/theme of the story and I didn't want to become that and overshadow the point the story was making.

 

[PennLady]

Liked that, PennLady. I think that comment that he doesn't begin his novel at "the beginning," is particularly useful advice for writers. When you start in the middle of action farther along the line, you immediately engage your reader's mind, helping the reader to connect and get inside the work. Any necessary background is filtered in as the story moves along--and where it becomes the most useful. One of the primary pieces of feedback acquisitions editors give to writers who have submitted manuscripts for consideration is, "I'd lop off the first three chapters and start where you start chapter four."

Likewise, I think, you don't have to end your story for the characters for all time either. One of my current Winter Holiday contest stories is still being raked over the coals for not literally carrying through to an ending that I thought was a pretty obvious conclusion readers could extrapolate to on their own--and that I didn't literally go to, because it wasn't the point/theme of the story and I didn't want to become that and overshadow the point the story was making.

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it. There were a couple of other quotes I intend to post, but they were long like this. Figured it might be better to space them out.

I'd agree as well. I took this quote also to mean that there's no one way to write, or at least that you do not have to start with a piece of paper and write from beginning to end. He wrote on index cards, rewrote on them, then organized them into the proper order. I don't write like that but it's interesting to know that a famous, well-regarded writer like Nabokov didn't sit down and write his works in an orderly fashion.

As for endings, I'm sure I don't need to talk about my feelings or my own experiences with that endings. Again, I can only agree with you that a story does not need to end in a precise manner with all ends tied up.

The whole interview is quite interesting. I know very little about Nabokov and so the interview is full of totally new things for me. Also, he didn't like Dostoevsky.

 

[_Lynn_]

Words should be only the clothes, carefully custom-made to fit the thought. ~~ Jules Renard

 

[PennLady]

A creative writer must study carefully the works of his rivals, including the Almighty. He must possess the inborn capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world. In order to do this adequately, avoiding duplication of labor, the artist should know the given world. Imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the back yard of primitive art, the child’s scrawl on the fence, and the crank’s message in the market place. Art is never simple.

-- Vladimir Nabokov, Playboy interview, January 1964

 

[_Lynn_]

Writing—the art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye—is the great invention of the world . . . Great, very great in enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space; and great not only in its direct benefits, but greatest help, to all other inventions. ~~ Abraham Lincoln (February 11, 1859)

 

[_Lynn_]

Sentences which suggest far more than they say, which have an atmosphere about them, which do not merely report an old, but make a new, impression . . . to frame these, that is the art of writing. ~~ Henry David Thoreau (Journal, August 22, 1851)

 

[sr71plt]

Writing—the art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye—is the great invention of the world . . . Great, very great in enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space; and great not only in its direct benefits, but greatest help, to all other inventions. ~~ Abraham Lincoln (February 11, 1859)

Any idea what Abe was smoking at the time? I can grasp the converse with the absent and unborn concepst, but I can't get writing as a way of communicating with the dead.

 

[_Lynn_]

Any idea what Abe was smoking at the time? I can grasp the converse with the absent and unborn concepst, but I can't get writing as a way of communicating with the dead.

Words they wished they had said? Written memorials to them? Believing they still hear somehow?


I'm old, but I missed Abe by a few years, so I never had the opportunity to chat with him.

 

[sr71plt]

I'm old, but I missed Abe by a few years, so I never had the opportunity to chat with him.

According to him, you apparently can. So, why don't you give it a go and let us know how it turned out?

 

[_Lynn_]

According to him, you apparently can. So, why don't you give it a go and let us know how it turned out?

Sure thing. I'll get right on that, boss.



ETA:

I found him.

“It’s all that free-soil from sleeping on a volcano with the copperheads. The taste is in my mouth a little,” he said. “You know, during the Hooker’s attack on Lee.”