The Wonderful Thing About Line Edits | Jane Friedman

When I met with my mentor in his Greenwich Village duplex, we'd sit side by side at his dining room table walled in by hundreds of books. Armed with his trusty Mont Blanc, Don Newlove slashed through my sentences, slathering them with ink, making me read my version first, then his, and tell him why his was better!

For about eight months we did this, until I bridled at my mentor's "improvements." By then it hardly mattered, since I'd learned most of what Don had to teach me, which boiled down to this: Never let a dead, droopy, or sawdusty sentence-a sentence not worth reading once, let alone twice-stand. In those eighteen months, thanks to Don I became the next best thing to a poet: a stylist.