Do Editors Get Better with Age?

At our monthly SCBWI meeting on Monday, I learned that Emma Ledbetter, assistant editor as Atheneum, is going to be one of the advisors at this year’s Falling Leaves master class in Lake George – and that made me smile. Three-and-a-half years ago, Emma was my mentor at the Rutgers One-on-One Conference. It was her first Rutgers -- and mine. And it made me wonder whether editors, like authors, get better with age.

Now, before anyone sees this as negative or an attack on Emma’s abilities, let me say that I have no complaints about her. I implemented one of her suggestions in my picture book, and she suggested I send it to her boss (mentioning her in my query letter), since, as an assistant, she didn’t yet have acquisition authority. But that doesn’t answer my basic question: Do editors get better with age?

It’s a truism that authors get better with age. While a few authors’ best-known works were their first books (Elie Wiesel, J.D. Salinger) that doesn’t mean it was their best work. And scores of author got better after they had a few books under their belts (Mark Twain, Stephen King, Charles Dickens, George Orwell, etc., etc.) So, what this really tells us is that writers get better with practice. The closer they get to their 10,000 hours, they better they get. But practice takes time, and time brings experience and age. Experience makes one a better writer because it gives you something to say and something to draw upon – but experience, without practice, gives you something to say without the skill to say it.

The same is true of editors. After all that education and English degrees and hundreds of books under their belt, experience makes them better editors because a good editor doesn’t just fix commas and semicolons -- she develops and massages the author’s style until the message gets out. And that is something a veteran editor does better than an inexperienced assistant. (And this is to say nothing of the relationship between author and editor, which would probably be a great topic for a future post!).

Of course, that’s true of any job, whether it’s master mechanic, carpenter, accountant brain surgeon. Time on the job makes you better -- and I’m not making some academic argument here. I was once in Emma’s shoes (and yeah, that's as uncomfortable as it sounds). That is, I got my first editing job nineteen years ago, and I’d sure like to think I’m a whole lot better now than I was then. Today, I’m the Executive Editor at AlbanyEditing. There is no way I could have handled that two decades ago.

Come to think of it, I'm sure I couldn't have handled Emma’s job at a big publisher like Atheneum then either.

Emma Ledbetter has a great reputation in the world of kidlit, and Nancy Castaldo, the Eastern NY SCBWI regional advisor, sang her praises. Since she was good three years ago, I can only imagine that she’s amazing now. And I hope to see that in person at Falling Leaves!

P.S. I'm still funding my next book through Indiegogo. Any amount you can contribute, is greatly appreciated. And the best part is, you get a copy of the book! Thanks for your donation!