Getting Feedback: Real World Writers
David Guterson
It could be, "I couldn't possibly make it one word better," then that's a really good time to show it to other people that you trust and respect and start getting input from them because you do lose your objectivity as time goes by and you become incapable.

Joe Satriani
I really like to be able to turn to a friend and say, "Do I suck today? Is this like really bad or am I doing OK?" Because I know that when you're in the middle of the experience, the expression, you really shouldn't be judging yourself.

Rush Limbaugh
The bottom line is to get it right. My brother is a prolific writer. He loves writing. And he's extremely intelligent, he's got a similar mindset and point of view on things as I do. And I wanted him to go over it and say, "Is there anything you'd add here?" This is again, the whole point of anything I write, my newsletter, and I have an executive editor there, and we collaborate, she does much of the writing in the newsletter, which again comes from, and is inspired by, things which occurred on the radio, the key is to get it right.

Dennis Richmond
Nothing is written in a vacuum here. Everyone has a hand in it. Sometimes it'll breeze right through, in wire to wire, exactly the way it was initially written. Rarely, though.

Thomas Clark
I'm a better writer when I'm working with somebody who looks at my work and says, "OK, this is all…it's all moving in the right direction except this paragraph here." Because an outsider, and an outsider can be an editor, could be your wife, can be anyone. But an outsider doesn't know your thought process, and sometimes you're thinking a transition and it doesn't make it onto the page. An outsider reading that says, "Excuse me, there's no transition here. You went from here to here and you're hoping that the reader jumps and I'm sorry, I'm not willing to make that jump with you." Oh, OK, so you make that change.

David Ellefson
My wife Julie should actually get a plug for doing some very painstaking editing on the book, she was nine months pregnant at the time, and I would drag her into the office, the office in our home where my computer is and I kept saying, "Come on please help me out I've got to get this manuscript turned in, I really need to get this thing finished up," and she'd be like, "Oh brother," you know. And we were… "Cuz she would just flat out say this is absolutely horrible," you've got to get that out of there. She was just relentless.

Peter Farrelly
You've gone crazy. I'm just try to help you get… find your sanity again. Sanity?!? I'm not sane.

Peter Farrelly
But that'll help you recover. He's gonna help you feel right again, you know.

Bobby Farrelly
These men are gonna help you feel right, right again.

Peter Farrelly
But I really edit myself or have my brother, parents, friends, anybody who'll read it, edit. In fact, I look back on Outside Providence and I wish I had more editing from somebody because there are things in it now, ten years later, that really sicken me a little…like…story lines. Not so much editing like, that comma shouldn't have been there but just every chapter seemed to go an extra paragraph where somebody might have said, "Hey why don't you snip that and…sharper ending."