Frivolous Fiction Friday

Okay, girls, here is the first installment of The Manuscript. Very rough but it's just for fun. I'm going to give weekly installments, kinda Dickenesque style. Hopefully the final result will be a cool piece of frivolous fiction that was worth five minutes of your precious blogging time.

The Manuscript

Chapter 1

Callyn resented every moment she was awake. At 2:23 in the morning she wanted nothing more to be in a dreamless sleep. It was the dreams that forced her awake just now and the night before and the night before that. These dreams were similar in content and varied only slightly in circumstance. Images of women with grotesquely full lips, pert noses that early disappeared into overly rouged faces and geometric bodies that gyrated across the black backdrop of Callyn’s eyelids. Men in seat splittingly tight breaches ravaged and tore at the plunging dresses of the women. Instead of screams of terror the women began to sing and the men began to dance. The picture was obscene and convoluted reminiscent of Picasso’s The Demoiselles D’Avignon. Callyn awoke out of sheer desperation of escape the whir of noise and dancing.

The microwave beeped and Callyn removed the mug of warm milk. Something had to change. Her inner Joseph tore apart the details of her dream searching for answers to its meaning. “I need to quit.” She told herself aloud. For the last two years she’d been attempting to climb the corporate ladder in the publishing world. During her senior year of college she had interned at a notable publishing company and knew it was the industry for her. After completing her Masters degree in English Literature she took a job with a well-known company reviewing and editing manuscripts. It wasn’t an area of her first love but experience was necessary to advance in any profession. So, for the last two years, 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, Callyn read and edited manuscripts for Romance novels.

Initially it seemed like a position of power. She had always enjoyed a good historical romance. But in reality, it was her boss, Helen Marsh, who held the power and above her, the market ruled. When Callyn first started reading the drafts she had taken a red pen and gone crazy. Descriptions like undulating member and cranberry sized received a bleeding mark through the type. Plots whose heroes essentially raped the heroine and then plead reformation and were incredulously forgiven, were given a big fat rejection stamp then passed on to the higher publishing powers for final dismissal.

Every so often she received a manuscript that drew her into its pages. Heroines with charisma and character, plots that kept her guessing, dialog that moved, Heroes worth winning. The romantic suspense let butterflies loose in her stomach and when the heroine and hero finally kissed she would audibly exhale the breath she’d been holding.

Much to Callyn’s surprise, however, her rejections were rejected, her edits overwritten. The promising authors that held her audience were sent trite and unapologetic letters of rejection. Six months into her job Callyn received an invitation to lunch with Helen. After small talk over appetizer salads and downing two martinis Helen was ready to get to the point. “I’m not sure we’re on the same page, Callyn. You are bright and detail oriented but you just don’t seem to understand the work your in. You need to know the market or find another job.”

“Know the market?” Callyn parroted back feeling the blood rush to her cheeks.

“Yes, the market—Women are the market and they want to read the kind of novels you are rejecting. They want predictability, heated love scenes and happy endings.”

Callyn tried to recover. “I thought I was reading and editing for women. I think I represent women fairly well. I read books--well, use to read books, to escape. And I do understand the desire for a happy ending. Some of my favorite novels are predictable and romantic. You know, Jane Austin, Elizabeth Gaskell. Even the Bronte sisters have happy endings in their own dark way.”

“Jane Austin is dead, Callyn. If you gave an Austin manuscript to any publisher, let alone a trailer park dweller, it would be rejected flat out. Too wordy, not to the point, not scintillating enough. Women want the touching, the lovemaking, the sex they don’t get at home. They want verbal and physical sparring that ends in bed not in divorce or a restraining order. Life is miserable for most women, has been throughout history and its no different now. Women want chateaus, not mortgages. They want to ride bareback across the moors, not sit in a minivan waiting for the light to change. When babies come, women to read that pregnancy and nursing drives a man wild with lust. She wants to her heroine to feel that even knocked up or lactating, she reciprocates his desire. Woman don’t want emotionally anal men like Mr. Darcy, or psychos like Heathcliff.”

“And,” Helen said, adding the final nail in her argument, “they want it wrapped up in 70,000 words or less.”

Callyn looked primly at her salad then stirred her club soda. In her mind she vehemently defended Mr. Darcy and even spared Heathcliff some defense.

“As one classic reader to another, I understand what you’re feeling. Over the years the general public has developed ADD when it comes to literature. But publishing is a business and we publish what sells. I need you to remember that when you edit; this is business not English 420.”

Helen paused waiting for Callyn to look up from her soda. Callyn looked up to meet her boss’ pointed look but again didn’t answer. “Callyn, you have three months to turn it around.”

Callyn stared at Helen. After graduating top of her class from Northwestern University seven months ago, here she sat with an ultimatum: sell garbage or find another job. “Okay, I’ll sell…I’ll try harder to read for the market.”

“Good for you. That’s what I wanted to hear. Now where is our waitress?”

So for the last 18 months Callyn had been he model romance editor. She put periods in run on sentences, inserted commas, took out endless to-be verbs and redundant adjectives and generally tried to ignore the plot of 98% of the manuscripts that crossed her desk. Callyn had never been a more valued employee. Lately in review meetings Helen even ventured to solicit Callyn’s opinion about this writer or that manuscript. Yes, she was climbing the publishing ladder and loathing every step.

“Maybe this is what happens when you sell your soul to the publishing devils.” thought Callyn as she fingered the black circles under her eyes. “ You’re haunted by romance characters on meth until you turn into a hag.” She gathered her thick brown curls into a clip, sprayed on some anti-frizz hair product and began a futile attempt to banish the black circles with over-priced concealer. Lip gloss, blush, mascara, pumps, satchel, 15 minutes later, Callyn locked her studio apartment door and headed down to the subway. She braced herself for another day at the office.