Finalizing Quotes

The research is the easiest. The outline is the most fun. The first draft is the hardest, because every word of the outline has to be fleshed out. The rewrite is very satisfying.

When you finish a record, I look at it like a photograph. It's already taken. You got it the way you wanted it to be. You edit it, make sure the light and contrast are right, then you just put it away, and that's your photograph. Then you don't really think about it anymore.

When a piece is done, I mix it before going on to any other piece.

To tell you the truth, I don't edit much at all. Most times, when I have finished the first draft, that's the book. Of course, I work on the page I am on until I am happy with it. I might even say that I try to state the landscape.

Look for your choices, pick the best one, then go with it.

The book doesn't end when you finish writing it.

When you make a record, you listen to it literally hundreds of times. When it's done and you can't do anything else, I never listen to my records.

Only towards the end of this process are any of the chapters in fully readable condition, a state of affairs that used to alarm my wife. But Joan's got used to it.

I do a lot of revising on paper. Sometimes I think I should just write longhand - what I type reads very different once I print it out.

When I'm editing, I tend to cut, go back over it, cut, go back over it, cut, so by the time I'm done, even with a cut, I don't have a rough cut and then work on it so much. I have a pretty rigorous cut of the movie that's usually in the range of what the final movie is going to be. It doesn't mean I don't work on it a lot after that, but I get it into a shape so I feel I can really tell what it needs, or at least it's ready to show people.

Once you've finished typing and moving text around and everything else, you have to leave it alone for a while. You do that to see if it stands up, to see if all the loose edges have been trimmed, if it makes sense, if it's consistent, what shape it really has. You can't tell that while you're working on it.

I'm constantly revising. Once the book is written and typed, I go through the entire draft again.

I have pretty much made up my mind to do this.

I think I can recognize when a piece is at a state of completion.

The 10% between 90% done to 100% done takes most of the time, causes most of the stress, but is all of the value.

I'm not a decision guy. I want to finish guys.

As in the case of making a mound, if, before the very last basketful, I stop, then I shall have stopped. As in the case of leveling the ground, if, though tipping only one basketful, I am going forward, then I shall be making progress.

I love production. I could do it 365 days a year. Post is different. It's just too slow, and everything is very finite.