A Quote by Joseph Kanon

When you're editing, you want to be the perfect appreciator, not another writer. — © Joseph Kanon
When you're editing, you want to be the perfect appreciator, not another writer.
I never knew what my role in art was, because I was such a deep appreciator and such a passionate appreciator. But every time I would try to sit down and be an illustrator or painter, it was just not my best use.
All three parts of filmmaking [writing, shooting, editing] contribute to rhytm. You want the script to be a tight as possible, you want the acting to be as efficient as possible on the set, and you have enough coverage to manipulate the rhythm in the editing room, and then in the editing room you want to find the quickest possible version, even if it's a leisurely paced film. I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It's all about editing.
Every time I sit down to write, I need to commit to a word count goal, otherwise I waste too much time editing and re-editing my previous work, staring dreamily off into space, pretending that I'm thinking profound, poetic thoughts when really I'm just thinking, 'Look at me being a writer! I'm so happy I'm a writer!'
Ever since 'Strange Heaven,' I haven't really reread my old work. Not so much because I don't like the writer I was, or because I find flaws in the writing, but more because I get so burnt out on a novel once I've finished writing, revising, editing and copy editing it that I genuinely never want to look at it again after it's gone to press.
You must stop editing--or you'll never finish anything. Begin with a time-management decision that indicates when the editing is to be finished: the deadline from which you construct your revisionary agenda. Ask yourself, 'How much editing time is this project worth?' Then allow yourself that time. If it's a 1,000-word newspaper article, it's worth editing for an hour or two. Allow yourself no more. Do all the editing you want, but decide that the article will go out at the end of the allotted time, in the form it then possesses.
The best moments can't be preconceived. I've spent a lot of time in editing rooms, and a scene can be technically perfect, with perfect delivery and facial expression and timing, and you remember all your lines, and it is dead.
Editing is the only process. The shooting is the pleasant work. The editing makes the movie, so I spend all my life in editing.
Editing is the only process. The shooting is the pleasant work. The editing makes the movie, so I spend all my life in editing
I had a perfect life in my reach once, and it was a crashing bore. Perfect is too clean, too easy. I don't want perfect any more than I want to be perfect. I want imperfect.
Movies get found in the editing room. The movie that you make is not always necessarily the movie that comes out of the editing room. The trick is to perfect the movie that you have and make it the best version of what you've shot, regardless of what the intent may have been.
I'm an appreciator. I love all kinds of books, and I want others to love them, too.
So many people are concerned with being the perfect 'something.' Whether it's the perfect singer, the perfect sexy girl, or the perfect feminist. I don't want to be the perfect anything.
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.
In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices.
The idea that a film is created in the editing room - it's only a certain kind of movie that's made in the editing room and it's not one that I really want to see.
But the writer who endures and keeps working will finally know that writing the book was something hard and glorious, for at the desk a writer must try to be free of prejudice, meanness of spirit, pettiness, and hatred; strive to be a better human being than the writer normally is, and to do this through concentration on a single word, and then another, and another. This is splendid work, as worthy and demanding as any, and the will and resilience to do it are good for the writer's soul.
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