Ted Eytan is a wicked smart guy. So I’m not surprised that he managed to write something so totally on-pitch about Vivian. It got me thinking about beginnings, too. Vivian was hired at IFTF about a week before me. A spring conference was in full swing, and we were both trying really hard to figure out what was going on.

She started out with IFTF as an editor, but even after the bulk of her work was no longer straightening out sentences (their run-ons had run-ons!) or making sense of our idiosyncratic style guide, she remained a force for good. And by good I mean clarity. I once told her she possessed an iron fist of logic—sounds better than the accusations of being an anal editor. She made a label out of that and put it at the top of her monitor.

She’s helped me in more ways than I can count, a number of them more profound than I can share here.

(So I stuck this post in Drafts and ignored it for six months. Time for them dusty drafts to see the light of day, heal, photosynthesize, grow a little.)