Lunch with my editor was always one of the sweetest rituals in my writing life. At least once every year, and once or twice during the writing of a book, my editor would invite me to come to New York to have lunch and meet the other people in the publishing house who might be working on my book – publicists, Internet marketers, jacket designers, copy editors.

I was a New York Times best-selling author, and that seemed to matter in that world, they would pay for my trip into the city. Lunch would always be at upscale and trendy – not luxurious – restaurant. My editor would carve out plenty of time and usually I would meet her or him in her office, sometimes the conference room would be reserved so we could all talk about the publication of my book, the book tour, the publicity plan, special promotions, big media hits.

There was always a snooty maitre’d, a bottle of wine, a bag of new hardcover books for me to read, fresh and hot rolls.

Almost everybody at the meetings in the publisher’s office were female, they were almost all buff and smartly dressed, they said the nicest things about my work, they told me all of the things they were planning for my books, some of which happened. I am not that dumb, I took it all with a grain of salt, but I liked to hear it. When you work alone in a basement all year, praise has to last a long time.

I loved the lunches, I felt like William Faulkner. They usually went out for two or three hours, we took as much time as was needed to catch up with each other, trade publishing news, talk about my book-in-progress. The editor would listen carefully, throw some ideas at me, take notes on chapters, tell me how it seemed the book was shaping up, crank me up about it.  It was the only time I ever got to talk about the book in any detail, and my editors always seemed so eager to hear it. At the end of lunch, they always told me how brilliant my work was,  how fortunate they were to be publishing it, how proud.

I’m sure the editors cranked up all the writers, but they knew how to do it, and I always floated away from my lunches feeling like Hemingway about to launch a great book into the world. The high lasted for months, they know how to get writers excited about their books.

I have to say I treasured those lunches, they grounded me, inspired me, excited me about my work.

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Life has changed, of course, for you, for me. There are no more lunches with writers, no leisurely talks about the work, not puffing up of the writerly ego, no trips to New York, no face to face meetings with anybody. Editors don’t want to hear about the book, they want a final manuscript and they spend precious little time editing if.  If you want to talk to an editor, you make a phone appointment, usually for weeks in advance, and usually for 10 or 15 minutes. Or better yet, hire a freelance editor so the other editors don’t have to edit much at all.

All of my editors are gone, in recent years I rarely, if ever, got to speak to anyone who knew me or had met me. I got the feeling in the new world that writers like me were now considered a  necessary evil, an impediment to good marketing and profit. Nobody bothered to pretend any longer that we were special or important.  A few years ago, when I was negotiating my last big book contract, an editor suggested on the phone that she would give me a three-book contract if I would agree to buy a puppy and write a book about it.

I was much offended – had she ever read one of my books? – and she was much shocked that I was offended. Buying a puppy to write a book is a disturbing idea to me, that is not a book, that is a cute puppy on a book cover. What would the book be about? Oh, it didn’t matter, she said, you’ll think of something. My agent at the time thought it was a great idea, puppies, she said were so cute, that was all they needed to know. I knew my days in that world were numbered.

I don’t know, dear readers, if you understand how hurtful or demeaning that conversation was to a writer who loved being a writer and aspired to be a very good one and worked so hard at it every day. Buy a puppy and agree to write a book about it without even knowing it? Really?

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So that was then, this was now. Nostalgia is nothing but a trap, an illusion.   Tuesday morning, I drove to Columbia County, about two hours away, and met with my new editor, Rosemary Ahern at the Hillsdale Diner. Rosemary used to work in publishing in New York, she saw the same things I did, and had the courage to break away, move upstate, find a good man to love, and take the risk of becoming a freelance editor. We met about the time we both had started our new lives, we were still nervous, we connected right away.

All over publishing, writers like me – we love editors and need them – are scrambling to find people like Rosemary. She is gifted, honest, experienced and she actually loves writers. She takes the time and care to edit their books carefully.  I am not, as  most of you know, into looking back, it always seems pointless to me. But Rosemary is the kind of editor who used to edit the books of writers like me. Something important was lost, but I still have it.

I am so lucky to have her, she has been the rock and guide for my writing for some years now. I love to have lunch with her. We don’t go to Manhattan, but to a small diner near Hillsdale, New York. When she comes to see me, which she does once or twice a year, we have lunch at the Round House Cafe, she wants to meet the animals I write about. Lunch doesn’t cost $150 like it used to, it costs about $16 plus tip. We don’t have two or three hours, but an hour or so, and the conversation is quite wonderful and it goes by so quickly.

Rosemary is honest with me,  the feedback is polite but direct. She helps me figure out the chapters, the pace, she gives me back anything she doesn’t think is great – she doesn’t think a lot of my chapters are great on the first round. She always makes me feel gifted, important, and supported. Writing can be a strange and lonely business, editors like Rosemary are so important.

Rosemary does not flatter me, or waste too much time on praise. Good editors are like that, it is assumed that you are worth something, or there would be no lunch at all. I loved our brunch Tuesday morning, I felt so good about my writing. I felt like a writer again. I am not sure I would  have survived the transition from the old world to the new without her. Even when she must have wondered how I could ever pay her, she never wavered or left me behind.

Driving back from the diner and the meeting with Rosemary, I stopped and got my Iced Decaf Coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts for the ride home, she had scribbled out a chapter list for my next book “Talking To Animals” – I am half-way done. She helped me figure out the second half of the book, I was stumped, and I am wildly excited about it, there is so much rich material in my life, and in my life with animals.

I have seven more chapters to go, and they are due by Labor day. Rosemary says this may be my best book yet. After my agent, the pages go to my new publisher Simon & Schuster.  Life is just the most fascinating thing, if you can keep your perspective and sense of irony about it.

All those fancy lunches, all those high-powered and polished editors, all those trips to New York and meetings, all that ego-crunching when my writing world fell apart, and here I am, in a diner in upstate New York, sipping on my seltzer water and ordering two scrambled eggs and a piece of dry wheat toast,  wondering how it is that I have the best editor I have ever had, writing one of the most promising books I have ever worked on, and having the most fun I have ever had at an editor’s lunch.

The thing is that Rosemary is a brilliant editor, as good as any I have worked with,  and a very wonderful person. I love you, Rosemary, what a gift you are,  and I never said that to any editor before.