In a nutshell

From a New Yorker essay by Adam Gopnik about Damon Runyon:

Writers train for one length or another, and Breslin's [book] is essentially a series of eight-hundred-word columns strung together, all told in that good Breslin style—quick glimpses of Prohibition, the Hearst press, stealing coats in the Depression—so that the total effect is like watching the world's longest train go by at night.

Here, Gopnik is discussing veteran journalist Jimmy Breslin's biography of Runyon, but he also manages to sum up what it often feels like to be a professional repairer of other people's words—whereby you're responsible for retaining each writer's unique voice while fitting it seamlessly into the context and tone of a particular publication.