Storytellersunplugged

Where Words Meet

On The Importance of Revising - A Horror Story

by Gerard Houarner

In keeping with the Storytellersunplugged tradition of telling a scary story for October, I’d like to present the following “original” – a “true” story about a fellow named….um, ah…..Ron. Yes, this story is told from the pov of “Ron” but it could be anybody’s story – why it could be your neighbor’s story, or the guy sitting next to you in a writing workshop, or even your story, or perhaps even…..mine.

….

So I received a proof from a publisher of a novel finished some time ago which took a long while to write. Starts and stops, structural collapses and rebuilding. You know the routine.
Then it made the rounds, and there were starts and stops, structural collapses and the need to rebuild a career. You know the routine.

So I get this book back, which belongs in the past and is no longer where I’m heading but I’m glad it’s coming out, and there is a context. There have been problems, I’m told by the publisher. In cobbling dozens of individual chapter files into one master manuscript/file, I mistakenly put in the same chapter twice. The publisher is puzzled. My bad. Upon further review, I also neglected to put in an Interlude – not a chapter with a number, but an Interlude.
Yes, there is cuteness to the conceit, but there is also a very real reason for its existence, to do with cycling through points of view and introducing a –

I’m sorry. I know. You don’t care. You want to get to the scary part. I’ll tell you.

So these gross errors are fixed, but I also get a note that I forgot to finish a sentence in the ms.

Now my memory is that I went over this thing quite a number of times, and that’s something I should have picked up. Unless I was doing a last minute revision, got distracted, and forgot.

Things happen. I vowed to fix the problem.

But the seeds of doubt had been planted. Bad thoughts lurk.

The manuscript is a mess.

A disaster.

A heaping mass of unprofessional crap.

Then the proof came in.

I set aside my doubts and went to the first page. Read the first dozen, made a couple of changes, but everything looked fine. Relief trickled through me, a spare little stream running over parched earth.

Then I remembered that I’d wanted to compare the original ms with the proof to catch those errors an editorial changes the publisher said he’d made. I didn’t want to go to that humongous master document because there’d already been problems with that. No, I wanted to go to the original individual chapter files.

Yes. Because I’m a professional.

So I search through my computer, which is two and three machines removed from the one I originally started and finished the story on, find what I’m looking for and open up a few files.
Then I begin the tedious task of comparing the two manuscripts line by line to make sure what I wrote and intended to be in the ms is actually there.

And there is a problem. A very large and serious problem.

My heart sinks. A little knot grow at the back of my neck.

No, this cannot be.

The world shrinks to a tiny, flickering flame of hope surrounded by darkness.

I check another file, a chapter further along. I check the last chapter. Random chapters.

The problem is spread over the entire manuscript, from beginning to end.

The galley doesn’t match my files. Somebody has re-written the entire novel, from start to finish.

Oh, the story is still there. But paragraphs, whole chunks of narrative have disappeared.

Chapters have been split. Words, phrases, heaping helpings of paragraphs have been altered.

There is damage.

And darkness.

My mind races. My stomach turns. What is happening? Why doesn’t the galley match the files?
And then I make the most sickening realization of all, the one every writer, anyone who’s ever done anything creative, fears the most –

– the stuff in the galley is better than the stuff I wrote.

It’s all right there, in black and white.

Stiff, clumsy wording; remote characters; lecture chunks; odd dialogue. That’s the stuff I wrote. I thought it was good enough to send out. What was I thinking?

Did I really think this was worth anything at all?

There really is a sinking feeling, a sensation of dropping out of the world and into a pit which isolates you from every other living organism in the universe because you are not worthy of sharing the same reality with the meanest water bug from that reality.

It feels something like the sickening feeling you get when you’ve locked yourself out of your car, or your house.

I know that feeling.

But this is worse.

It feels like every letter and phone call and email you’ve ever received saying sorry, this wasn’t to my taste, or it doesn’t fit, or try again (though after a thousand of those, you feel like a beekeeper who just doesn’t feel the stings anymore).

It feels like the silence that follows a follow-up query to ask if your story is still under consideration, or a request for your contributor’s copy or your money, which you still haven’t received even though it’s been so many weeks, months, years since publication.

It feels like the embarrassed eye-shift and side-shuffle into an open elevator an editor or publisher gives you as you approach them at a convention with the intent of casually asking if they’re open for proposals, or if they ever read that proposal you sent to them

I know that feeling.

But this is worse.

Somehow – and I know this is silly because the magnitude and shock shouldn’t be the same – it feels like someone you love telling you they don’ love you. Oh, and: Goodbye.

I know that feeling.

Okay. This doesn’t beat that, but it’s in the same ball park.

What has happened, I surmise, is that the publisher has caught on that the manuscript is an irredeemable pile of shit. Maybe he’s picked up the thread of a story he liked somewhere in that mess. Perhaps he felt a deep pity for me. He did warn me – there were problems.

Take your time, he said. Make sure it’s what you want.

Yes. Hints. Clues. I hadn’t been clever enough to pick up on them. It’s like when you show up at a party and the host and hostess try to turn you away from the door and then they tell you the party’s cancelled only you hear the laughter and the tinkle of glasses and storm past them because you’re hungry and you need to use the bathroom and, hell, they did invite you only to discover that –

– you’re not wearing pants.

I don’t know that feeling. But perhaps you do.

So I go over the pages, and my brain explodes because someone has reached into my crude and clumsy prose and ripped out the necrotic organs and injected life and snap and personality.

Why, of course plant a character description right up front so the reader knows they’re not dealing with the usual blonde you see in the opening scenes of horror movies.

I pull up other chapters, and the changes run straight through. I consider printing out both – compare, synthesize.

I start running all the names of writers who’ve been published by this company, and yes, I can see this one’s hand, and that one – the snap, the crispness, yes, yes, they saved this thing
Give the re-writer a byline. All the money.

I suck. I can’t write for shit. I have to stop, now. I’ve contracted a terrible disease that’s robbed me of my verbal gifts – no, no, what am I saying, I never had any verbal gifts, how did I ever manage to get a couple of hundred stories published.

I actually open an email to the editor and start writing out my thoughts about not even going on with the proofing, just go ahead and publish it and give the other writer a by-line and the money…..

Something makes me back to the computer. Open up the chapter files again.

It’s not even a spark of hope. More of an instinctive twitch.

Hmmm, I thought I had this chapter open already.

Odd. This set of chapter headings are 1,2,3…, the other one, two, three…. Why is that?

Oh.

That first set was an early draft.

The other is the final draft.

The other draft looks just like the proof.

It was all so long ago. Oh.

Right. I remember tearing it apart. Making changes. Deleting, re-writing, reorganizing.

I’m the other writer.

That is the power and the necessity of revision.

It is the only thing that will keep you from killing yourself.

…..

There. I think if you’re a writer you’ll find that tall tale pretty terrifying.

Or hysterically funny. Two sides of the same coin.

Thank Poe it never happened to me. Just to some poor dope named “Ron.”

Names were changed to protect the stupid.

Nothing going on here.

Nope.

….

Stop look at me…..

Related posts:

1. The Importance of Being Earnest
2. Etched Deep - A Short Horror Story - Happy Halloween
3. DEFINING HORROR: Nine Musings on The Nature of Horror
4. Getting Hard for Horror
5. My Mom, Your Mom & The Horror Of Horror

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