I did not intend for anyone at work to find this site, mostly because I’ve always kept my day job and whatever this is, a hobby, a habit, a slightly obsessive record-keeping project that grew a public face, in two separate compartments that don’t talk to each other. Priya, who’s been the senior editor at the press for longer than I’ve worked there and hands me the trickiest manuscripts specifically because she trusts me to catch things other people miss, found it anyway, by accident, searching for something else entirely, and now reads it on her lunch break most days.

She does not keep her opinions to herself. This is, I should say, entirely in character, Priya is the same person who once returned a manuscript to an author with eleven single-spaced pages of notes when four would have covered it, so I probably should have predicted that once she found the site she’d start treating my star ratings the same way she treats a first-pass edit, as a draft that could stand improvement. She’s told me, more than once, standing in the doorway of my office with her coffee, that I rate things too generously, that a four star review reading as critical as some of mine do should honestly be a three, and that I’m letting the writing itself distract me from the actual verdict I’m supposedly delivering.

I’ve thought about this more than I’d like to admit, mostly because she’s not entirely wrong, and being told so by someone whose editorial judgment I trust completely carries more weight than the same complaint from a stranger online would. I do sometimes write my way into liking something a little more than I actually did in the room, the sentence-level pleasure of describing what worked pulling the number upward slightly past where my gut landed the night I actually finished it. I haven’t changed my system because of her, not exactly, my ratings still come from the same gut instinct they always have. But I do catch myself now, mid-review, occasionally rereading a paragraph and thinking, in her voice more than my own, is that actually a four, or is that a three you’ve talked yourself out of.

What I like best about the whole situation, honestly, is that it’s closed a loop I didn’t know was open. She edits my work all day and I’ve apparently, without ever asking, started letting her edit my judgment too, at least a little, at least on the margins where a four and a three sit close enough together that a second opinion actually matters. I still haven’t told her that. She’ll probably read this on a lunch break sometime next month and find out anyway.