Be Your Own Editor

“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”
—Oscar Wilde

I’ve been there, Oscar. I’ve been there. The question is: Were you more confident in that comma at the end of the day?

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“This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don’t consider it rejected. Consider that you’ve addressed it ‘to the editor who can appreciate my work’ and it has simply come back stamped ‘not at this address.’ Just keep looking for the right address.”
—Barbara Kingsolver, author of The Poisonwood Bible

Gosh, that’s a nice thought. How many of you think you can put that line of thinking into practice? Maybe after you’ve experienced success like Barbara Kingsolver’s…

It is impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A.
—from the rejection slip for George Orwell’s Animal Farm

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“The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
—Mark Twain

Why don’t any of us adults read Mark Twain anymore? I’ve always meant to check out his supposedly brilliant travel writing, including Innocents Abroad and Roughing It. The travel-writing genre doesn’t usually do it for me (I’d rather visit a place than read a book about it), but Twain’s books just might be the exception.

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It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.
—Robert Benchley

There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money either.
—Robert Graves, author of I, Claudius

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“The aversion you naturally and immediately took to my writing was, for once, welcome to me.”
—Franz Kafka, on his frighteningly rigid and hard-to-please father

“I think a certain fearlessness in the face of your own ineptitude is a useful tool.”
—Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours and Specimen Days

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Those who write don’t shoot, and those who shoot don’t write.
—Robert Kennedy

And then there was Hemingway… but we won’t go there.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
—George Orwell, Animal Farm

Same goes for fictional characters (human and animal).

I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.
—Anne Frank, “speaking” to her diary

Try thinking of your book’s readers that way.