![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() He does not suffer fools he does not gush or hug or high-five I’d estimate that he keeps at least two-thirds of what he’s thinking to himself. Ivan manages to be exacting and supportive at the same time. In my years of writing, I have learned to silence many a voice inside my head: The purse-lipped aunt who once asked, “What do YOU have to write about?” the block-buster blusterer who told me to pursue only book ideas in which “a lot of people die” the academic second-guesser who sniffed that unless you’ve “read everything” you have no business writing about it.īut Ivan’s is an internal voice I welcome. Would Ivan cringe? I ask myself – and out it goes. I cannot count the number of sentences I have deleted on the dead certainty that Ivan would judge them flabby, flaccid, fake, strained, insufficiently researched, high falutin’, or just plain cruddy. I know Ivan reads most of what I write (he’s been force fed my last three books by blurb-hungry editors and publicists), and I’m acutely aware of how high his standards are. I swear he’s standing right behind me, shaking his head and muttering unprintable things under his breath. Ivan Doig lives and writes about a mile and a half from where I live and write – but there are times, and now is one of them, when it feels like he has taken up residence in my home office. ![]()
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