Contemporaneous: Chapters 16 – 17
16. I leave Melody’s manuscript sitting there in my email, festering like … and I can’t come up with metaphor or simile that will illustrate what a festering, diseased, terminal clusterfuck it is, so I’ll just say that it sat there in my email, festering like only her manuscript could. Despite my disdain, I still want to get the best out of it and out of Melody, so I need to work out a strategy. But I’m frazzled now. And feel an edge, like Melody’s dismissal isn’t the indifferent vainglory of some cocky young writer, but divine condemnation that exemplifies my own failures. There are other manuscript on my…
Contemporaneous: Chapters’ 2 & 3
2. “How was your day?” she asks me. I hate this question, although not because she asks it (although she knows how I dislike the question), but because my day was like the day before it, and the one before that, and the one before that. You get the idea. If anything different were to happen, anything spectacular, anything worthy of mentioning, then I’d mention it, but working as an editor in a small publisher doesn’t exactly offer the excitement of, say, working in the bomb squad. “The usual,” I tell her. I know she hates that answer because she’s a sharer. She’ll detail everything that happens throughout her day…