editor, Eamon Dolan, is great at delivering difficult news with a liberal dose of kindness. Early in my first communication from him, he wrote, “My notes take a very matter-of-fact tone, but please imagine a ‘please’ in front of all of them. I use a very direct style in my marginal notes for the sake of clarity and efficiency, and I apologize in advance if any of them veer into brusqueness.” Those two sentences at the start of our professional relationship made months of otherwise hard-to-hear critiques not just bearable but many times delightful because he had dismissed any doubts I had about
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