I sent Nina's edited manuscript back on a Friday.
Three weeks of careful work. Every chapter read twice. Notes in the margin document that ran to forty pages because the manuscript deserved that level of attention and because Nina had written something that kept surprising me every time I thought I had understood its full shape.
I sent it with a single line in the email body.
It is ready. And it is remarkable. Call me when you have read the notes.
She called four hours later.
She said: forty pages of notes.
I said: the manuscript warranted them.
She said: Lena. Some of these are not notes. Some of these are just you being emotional in the margins.
I said: those are also notes. Emotional responses are editorial information.
She said: you wrote in chapter twelve and here I had to st
