Diana

“Since I didn't have a candy wrapper to help me with the bad connection I was about to have, I resorted to using vocal sound effects. When Agent Carson picked up, I started my performance. "Agent... Agent Carson," I said, panting into the phone.

"Yes, Charley." She seemed unimpressed, but I wasn't about to stop now.

"I--I know who the kshshshshshsh are."

"I'm a little busy right now, Davidson. What is a Ksh, and why do I care?"

"I'm sorry. My kshshsh... is kshshsh... ing."

I repeat. What is a Ksh? And why do I care if it is ksh-ing?"

She was a tough one. I knew I should have waited and bought a Butterfinger at the Jug-N-Chug. Those wrappers crakled like Rice Krispies on a Saturday morning. "You aren't listeni--kshshsh."

"You're really bad at this."

"Bank ro-ksh-ers. I know who they kshshsh."

"Charley, if you don't cut this crap out."

I hung up and turned off my phone before she could figure out what I was trying not to tell her and call back.”
― Darynda Jones, Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet

“The first draft is black and white. Editing gives the story color.”
― Emma Hill

“Self editing is the path to the dark side. Self editing leads to self delusion, self delusion leads to missed mistakes, missed mistakes lead to bad reviews. Bad reviews are the tools of the dark side.”
― Eric T. Benoit

“An editor doesn't just read, he reads well, and reading well is a creative, powerful act. The ancients knew this and it frightened them. Mesopotamian society, for instance, did not want great reading from its scribes, only great writing. Scribes had to submit to a curious ruse: they had to downplay their reading skills lest they antagonize their employer. The Attic poet Menander wrote: "those who can read see twice as well." Ancient autocrats did not want their subjects to see that well. Order relied on obedience, not knowledge and reflection. So even though he was paid to read as much as write messages, the scribe's title cautiously referred to writing alone (scribere = "to write"); and the symbol for Nisaba, the Mesopotamian goddess of scribes, was not a tablet but a stylus. In his excellent book A History of Reading, Alberto Manguel writes, "It was safer for a scribe to be seen not as one who interpreted information, but who merely recorded it for the public good."
In their fear of readers, ancients understood something we have forgotten about the magnitude of readership. Reading breeds the power of an independent mind. When we read well, we are thinking hard for ourselves—this is the essence of freedom. It is also the essence of editing. Editors are scribes liberated to not simply record and disseminate information, but think hard about it, interpret, and ultimately, influence it.”
― Susan Bell, The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself