Quote

Truth is, every writer has to be a good editor, and you have to edit yourself. It's a skill every writer has to acquire.

In my experience, with very few exceptions - I am, as it happens, one of the exceptions - the one thing that most editors don't want to do is edit. It's not nearly as conducive to a successful career as having lunch out with important agents or going to meetings where you get noticed.

Editing requires you to be always open, always responding. It is very important, for example, not to allow yourself to want the writer to write a certain kind of book. Sometimes that's hard.

Writers have to put up with this editor thing; it is ageless and eternal and wrong.

I think editors have to come out of a certain kind of community.

There are two kinds of editors, those who correct your copy and those who say it's wonderful.

An editor is an accomplice, looking in from the outside. That objective view is essential. We don't write in a vacuum, and we don't publish in a vacuum.

One should fight like the devil the temptation to think well of editors. They are all, without exception - at least some of the time, incompetent or crazy.

Editing is simply the application of the common sense of any good reader. That's why, to be an editor, you have to be a reader. It's the number one qualification.

When you're editing, you want to be the perfect appreciator, not another writer.