“My advice would be expensive. I’d require five thousand dollars.”
“Okay.”
“And you’d have to keep our business relationship secret. I have a reputation to maintain. In other words, I don’t want my name to appear in your acknowledgements.”
“Sounds fair.”
“And you must to do everything I say and not question it.”
“Okey doke.”
He glanced at her over the tops of his glasses. “And you must never say okey doke again in my presence. When would you like to start?”
“As soon as possible. As I said, I’m on a deadline.”
Dr. Flowers opened a desk drawer and handed her a card with his contact information. “Very well. Send me what you have via email. I’ll look it over, and we’ll develop a plan of action.”
Six hours later
From: Professor Flowers
To: Laurie Lee
Subject: Payment
Dear Ms. Lee:
I finished reading your work. My price has gone up. I’ll need eight thousand dollars. If you agree to my terms, I’ll see you in my office at ten a.m. sharp. Also, and this is crucial, even though you are quite obviously a woman, you’ll need to take my criticism like a man. That means no crying or histrionics. I’ll be requiring a thousand dollars in advance.
Laurie sat in Professor Flowers’ office, pen poised over her brand-new daisy-patterned spiral notebook. The office was overly warm, and she kept tugging at the collar of her blouse.
Dr. Flowers stared up at the ceiling as if deciding how to begin the session. Eventually his gaze settled on her face. It was laser-like in its intensity.
“Let me begin by saying that on the sentence level, you’re one of the most unskilled writers I’ve ever encountered. It’s a miracle you’ve secured a publishing contract. I had no idea W&W standards had gotten so low.”
Laurie’s bottom lip trembled. She bit down on it almost hard enough to draw blood. No crying.
“Are you…Are you saying there’s no hope?”
“I am not. You possess a natural sense of story mechanics, and a somewhat engaging voice. But you have a tremendous amount of work ahead of you. Your first homework assignment is to read Strunk and White, cover to cover.”
“Skunk and who?” She looked up from her notes.
“Strunk and White. As I was saying, you’ve developed a number of bad habits that need to be addressed before we can even begin. Once you’re finished reading Strunk and White, I’ll give you a list of authors with distinctive styles. You’re to read their books and try your hand at emulating them.”
“That sounds like a lot of work. As you know, the clock is ticking and—”
“Young lady. You don’t yet have the skills to write a decent novel. You have to develop those first and the only way to do that is through reading those who have mastered their Craft. If you work diligently, you’ll make your deadline. I’ve devised a schedule for you. Here’s the list.” He handed her a typed piece of paper.
Laurie recognized many of the novels but she hadn’t read a single one. She wrinkled her nose at Pride and Prejudice. She’d paged through it once. The writing was creaky and old-fashioned.
“Since you’re a genre writer, I’ve selected authors who have some commercial sensibilities. Read the novels and then write several pages employing that author’s style. If we want to keep to your schedule, you should allow only a week for this task.”
Laurie didn’t know how she would possibly finish all the books in a week—when she was bored she tended to read sentences over and over—but she’d try her best. Her career and self-respect depended on it.
Twenty-Three
Exercise One (Catcher in the Rye)
If you really want to hear about it, I think old man Emeritus is a crummy teacher. All he does is sit behind his desk like some decrepit phony, yammering about art and aesthetics and lousy stuff like that. Don’t even get me started on how goddamn bossy he is…Anyway, we’re in his office, which is hot as the devil’s sauna, and I ask him, “What the hell is wrong with adverbs? If they crap up your writing so badly, why do teachers shove them down your throat in elementary school?”
Teachers kill me, they really do…Old man Emeritus especially. He’s so touchy about every little goddamn thing. He acts like you killed someone if you use the word “very” a few times. I said to him, look at page 102 in Catcher in the Rye, there’s a bunch of “verys”, two in a row even. He gets all high and mighty and says that’s a stylistic choice…like I even know what that means. He’s crazy, I’m telling you. Emeritus will be the death of me. I’m not kidding.
Exercise Two (Pride and Prejudice)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman who is forced to read prose in an archaic style will eventually resent the man who has foisted this exercise upon her.
“My dear Professor Flowers,” the pupil said earnestly. “I’m baffled as to how these exercises are assisting me. This novel’s language is unfamiliar to my ear. It will take me at least a fortnight to read it, and as you’re quite aware, the days until my deadline are swiftly dwindling.”
“Young woman. I am highly disturbed by your impertinence,” he replied coldly. “When we entered into this agreement, I daresay you made a solemn vow that you would accept my council without question. Do you wish to alter the terms of this agreement? I must say, your near-constant complaining is becoming tiresome. And what have I told you about attaching adverbs to dialogue. Are my directives unclear? Dialogue should be written so the reader will immediately discern the emotions of the character in question without need for attribution.”
“Forgive me for contradicting you, Dr. Flowers, but Jane Austen is liberal in her use of adverbs with dialogue tags.”
“You, madam, are no Jane Austen,” Dr. Flowers replied. “Use ‘said’ and ‘said’ alone or risk my extreme displeasure.”
Exercise Three (Lolita)
Emeritus, thorn in my side, burr in my shoe. My tormentor, my foe. Em-er-it-us, the taste of your name on my tongue is terr-i-ble.
He is Em, every day, a toad in a suit coat. He is a Flower that wilts and pricks at my fingers. He is a critic at large. He is Horace, a writer of books. But in my life he will always be a horse’s patoot.
Exercise Four (The Old Man and the Sea)
She was a young woman who needed to write a book and she had gone a week now without writing a word of it. During that time the old man had been directing her.
The young woman thought the old man was loco which is the worst kind of crazy and the young woman thought about quitting him, but then she would lose eight thousand dollars.
It also made the young woman sad to read a book like The Old Man and the Sea, which was about a fish and she didn’t care about fish. Not even as a dinner entrée. Not even in fish stick form. Not even those little Goldfish crackers.
“Are you mad at me?” Laurie said to Dr. Flowers. They were sitting in his office, preparing to discuss the work she turned in. Unexpectedly, she had fun with the writing exercises, but she knew they weren’t particularly flattering to her teacher, and she hoped he hadn’t taken offense. “And incidentally, I don’t really think you’re a horse’s patoot.”
Dr. Flowers nibbled a shortbread cookie. A trail of crumbs dusted his shirt and he swatted them away. (He had a whole tin of cookies but had never once offered her one.) “I’ve been called worse.”
“I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have—”
“To be frank, I admire your playfulness.”
“You do?” Laurie was suspicious. Everything they’d done so far was serious.
“And you know what makes these exercises work?”
“Because they’re fun?”
“No. Because they’re truthful. I think this is exac
tly how you feel about me, and what I’m teaching you.”
“Well, not exactly—”
“I won’t concern myself with your opinions about me. But I do hope you consider dropping some of your resistance to what I have to say. Your exercises, irreverent as they are, indicate much promise about your potential as a writer.”
“Thank you.”
“But you still have a long journey ahead of you. Tell me what you thought of the books.”
Laurie consulted the notes in her composition book. “I liked Pride and Prejudice, but I wished the language wasn’t so archaic. The rest of the books I didn’t care for at all.”
“And why is that?”
“Not my type of reading material. Initially I thought Catcher in the Rye was going to be fun, but then it turns out Holden’s in a mental hospital, and he gets estranged from his whole family, and then there’s his bizarre obsession with that silly hat. It was all so sad. Lolita, on the other hand, was more creepy than sad. I wanted to take a shower and scrub my skin with a loofah after I read it. And The Old Man in the Sea was plain depressing; he dies in the end! I don’t want to read a book where the main character doesn’t survive. I like HEAs.”
“Excuse me?”
“Happily Ever Afters. If you write romance, you always have an HEA.”
He rolled his eyes, and she thought of how much he hated eye rolling in fiction. Smiling was another one of his bugaboos. “And God forbid you should have anyone ever grin on the page,” he said during yesterday’s lesson. Laurie didn’t understand the problem. In real life people rolled their eyes and grinned all the time.
“The trouble with romance is there’s no suspense,” Dr. Flowers said. “You already know how the book is going to come out. That’s one of my many complaints about genre fiction. Why bother reading it?”
“Because it’s not necessarily the destination. It’s the journey.” She lifted her chin, feeling as if she’d made an important point.
“Yes, but you keep taking the same journey over and over; it’s like cruising on a Carnival ship to the Bahamas several times a year. The passengers and menus change but essentially it’s the same voyage.”
“I’d love to go to the Bahamas on a cruise ship, and I bet I would never get tired of it. They have movie theaters, midnight pizza buffets, snorkeling and—”
Dr. Flowers tossed her pages across his desk. “In order to grow as artists we must leave our comfort zones and read fiction that is sometimes contrary to our world view. Then, maybe one day, you can transcend your genre.”
Laurie was sleepy from the oppressive heat in Dr. Flowers’ office. Today she’d worn a lightweight sundress to their meeting, but she was still perspiring and it was sticking to the back of her legs.
“How will I transcend my genre if I don’t ever get to write my own work?”
“Fine. Tonight’s your night. Incorporate what you’ve learned thus far and write a scene for me to read tomorrow.”
“One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“May I have a cookie? I’m starving.”
He appeared to be struggling to suppress a smile. “If you want a cookie, you’re going to have to earn it. Let’s see how your scene goes.”
Laurie wasn’t sure she approved of Dr. Flowers’ methods, but whenever she wanted to question him, she kept thinking about the Karate Kid waxing all those cars. Strunk and White was also helpful. She had no idea adverbs were so frowned upon, and had always assumed they made her writing more descriptive. Now that she’d removed most of them, she could see the way they were junking up her work.
She was hesitant to start writing on her own novel again. For the first full hour she stared at the screen, but then she had an idea, and another one followed like pennies spilling out of a jar. She’d forgotten how much she’d missed her characters.
Dr. Flowers was staring up at the ceiling, having just read her chapter. He was silent for so long she felt like biting her fingernails down to nubs. She’d spent hours on her chapter, working it and reworking it, until she couldn’t bear to look at it anymore.
“Well?” she said.
He made an adjustment to his tie and took a sip from his tea cup. She was certain he enjoyed torturing her with his delaying tactics. He reached into the tin of cookies, withdrew one and snapped off a piece and handed it to her.
“It’s slightly better.”
Laurie stared at the cookie piece in her hand which was hardly larger than a crumb. But since she didn’t have breakfast she pushed it into her mouth.
“On the sentence level. You’re a quick study. The prose is much cleaner and easier to read. You’ve eliminated some of the hokey corn pone, and I saw fewer clichés.”
Laurie knew there was more to come. Comments that would probably make her want to throw herself in a well.
“It’s still extremely facile. The characterization’s skimpy, and the relentless cheeriness grates. Not to mention, I don’t believe a word of it.”
“You’re not supposed to believe it.” She spoke slowly, as if dealing with someone who was slightly touched in the head. “It’s fiction.”
“Surely you’ve heard the quote, ‘fiction is the lie that tells the truth’?”
She hadn’t, but she nodded her head as if she had.
“A novel must have a sense of authenticity for it to be taken seriously.”
Laurie flung her hands in the air. “How many times do I have to tell you this? I’m not writing serious fiction. I’m writing a lighthearted romance.”
“That doesn’t exempt you from being authentic. While it’s true that genre fiction will rarely be intellectually authentic, it must, at the very least, be emotionally authentic. That’s what’s missing here.”
Laurie squared her shoulders, prepared for battle. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My chapter’s brimming with emotion. On the second page the heroine’s bawling like a shorn lamb.”
Dr. Flowers gave her a cold look, and Laurie shivered even though the room was much too warm. “Yet I feel nothing for her.”
“I think you’re being unkind. Plain and simple.”
“What’s more, it’s clear you don’t either. As Robert Frost said, ‘No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.’”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She placed a hand over her heart. “I feel for Lucy.”
“I don’t think you do. It’s obvious to me she’s the toy doll you’re maneuvering around in service of your plot. You clearly have little knowledge of who Lucy is.”
“Now I know you’re crazy. Because guess what? Lucy’s mostly me. What do you think of them tomatoes?”
He smiled, the rarest of events, but it was not a warm smile. Rather, it was the smug smile of someone who’s just said, “Checkmate.”
“I suspected as much. It’s common for beginning writers to borrow heavily from real life. It’s usually a mistake because, ironically, the one person we tend to know the least is ourselves.”
“I know myself very well.”
He ignored her comment and said, “What is Lucy’s idea of perfect love?”
“Hmm. Let me give it some thought.”
“You should be able to answer me immediately. You’re writing a romance, which in a sense is a book-long argument between two lovers about whose version of love is superior. Also, what event in her past is haunting her? What’s her wound?”
“Is that important?”
“For someone who writes romance, you seem to know very little about it. Lovers are usually attracted to each other because, on a subconscious level, they’re hoping to find healing of their deepest wounds through the union.”
“I never really thought about it that way.”
“That’s quite obvious. Tonight, write about yo
ur main character’s wounds.”
“Okay,” Laurie said tentatively. Nothing immediately came to her. “How many pages?”
He closed his eyes, which meant he was preparing to dismiss her. “For as many pages as it takes for you to understand her pain.”
“She’s claustrophobic?” Dr. Flowers said. He sat behind his desk, his chin resting on his folded hands. The sun was bright behind him and his face looked ghostly. Laurie muffled a yawn; she was up late trying to complete her writing assignment.
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you claustrophobic?”
“Sometimes.”
He leaned forward, his watery eyes never straying from her face. But she’d gotten used to his penetrating gaze, and barely flinched. “What’s the underlying reason for your claustrophobia?”
“I have no idea. I’ve experienced it on and off all my life.”
“That’s worth exploring. You might want to give it some thought.”
“Is this therapy or writing lessons?”
Dr. Flowers dunked his tea bag into a cup of water. How could he drink tea when his office was so hot? Laurie had taken to bringing Polar Pops of Diet Coke to their sessions.
“That’s the thing about writing. It tends to reveal what we’re obsessed with and also what we’re avoiding, and sometimes the things we avoid are exactly the things we should be writing about.”
“I’m not avoiding anything.”
He was quiet for a moment, but she could sense the machinery in his mind whirring as he plotted his next move.
“Let’s try another tactic. Instead of writing about your character’s wounds, write about mine.”
“But I don’t know anything about you.”
“You write fiction. Make it up. Give me a backstory.”
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