Editors And Violin Makers

In an eloquent piece on the need for good editors in today's Internet age, Gary Kamiya says: "The art of editing is running against the cultural tide. We are in an age of volume; editing is about refinement. It's about getting deeper into a piece, its ideas, its structure, its language. It's a handmade art, a craft. You don't learn it overnight. Editing aims at making a piece more like a Stradivarius and less like a microchip. And as the media universe becomes larger and more filled with microchips, we need the violin makers." Going by some of the bloated pieces of contemporary fiction and non-fiction that one has encountered, one couldn't agree more.