A couple of weeks ago I wrote an appreciation of Bernard Taper, whose Profiles course I took while at Berkeley’s graduate school of journalism and who celebrated his 90th birthday in February.

He had some thoughts on what I’d written, which I’m sharing here. These comments are compiled from two voicemail messages and a phone conversation:

There are a couple of things I’d say about the piece. First of all I wasn’t trying to show you that writing is hard, I was trying to show you that writing is demanding, which is different. It isn’t always hard. It can be very joyous. But it is demanding because one has to have a very good sense of what the piece is about.

You say that I was interested in good ideas and good writing. That’s not quite what I was doing, or what I think a good editor does, and it has nothing to do with whether you like the writer or not. The main thing I’m looking for as an editor is this: have you recognized all the possibilities of your subject, and have you done the best that could be done in bringing out all the issues or themes in your subject.

When I say writing is demanding I don’t mean that you shouldn’t enjoy yourself. I think when you get a sense of all the possibilities and the things you hadn’t expected when you first start working on a piece there can be a lot of joy, as there can be when you suddenly find yourself writing a very good sentence or when you find yourself asking just the right question that you hadn’t anticipated of the person you’re interviewing.

Many, many times while I was working on a piece I would say to myself, am I really getting paid to do this? There is so much pleasure in it.

I’m not crazy about Joan Didion’s statements. Whether or not an editor likes a writer has nothing to do with it. For example, I like Joan Didion’s writing, but I don’t particularly like her as a person. I’m not quite tuned into the whole question of whether you should like the writer or not.

A good relationship with an editor is one in which the editor tells you things which are useful -- if the editor makes suggestions which improve the work. My concept of editing is not the picky stuff about colons and semicolons. As an editor I want to know whether in your writing you have learned your subject, whether you have fulfilled what you needed to fulfill in order to write well about the subject.

Over the years when students would come to me and say how do you do this or that, how do you come to a point where you can write a piece the way you think it should be. I'd say live a long time.