Sunday, December 24, 2006

Christmas Eve: And I'm Not Opening It

I'm not opening it. If I open it, I won't be able to work on it anyway, I'll just be able to worry about it. If I open it, I won't be able to call the people who understand my pain, such as: The Agent, The Screenwriter, The Writing Teacher or The Fellow Authors because it's Christmas and you can't call people to complain on Christmas unless you've been sent something much worse in the mail, like antrax.

Last year, around this same time, opening the 4th edited manuscript yielded symptoms similar to anthrax exposure, due to comments which, loosely translated, amounted to: "I hate the main characters and something's missing in the plot. So add more pages and put in more sex."

Actually, now that i see that written down, I'm making her comments sound clear. It was more like, "I don't like your book. Fix it, and put in some sex."

As much as I needed to be committed after that revision--which began using skills like Mind-Reading, and ended with me re-reading every book on revising fiction i had and trying to just make it better and longer and more literary to try to fool her into believing i understood what the fuck she wanted, Revision 6 was probably the worst.

Because Revision 6 was the one in which she rescinded what she asked to be revised in Revision 5.

Now do you see why I can't open Revision 9? Make it blue. No, green. Oh, maybe yellow?

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