Page 26 of Loathing My Boss
I threw my heart, body, and soul into loving his words and learning to love mine.
If my commitment to vengeance appears strong, it barely holds a candle to how I used to commit to love. I worshipped the pages of Viktor’s novels, adapted the common phrases into my daily lingo. I did anything to feel closer to the man, the myth, the legend.
Who, presently, is squinting up at one such adoring fan with his brows knit and the sincerest, “Um…thanks,” around.
The redhead falters, pushing up her glasses, and I wonder if the age-oldnever meet your heroesis slashing itself through her mind right about now, too. She laughs, awkwardly, timidly, and works her fingers into her curls. “I’m sorry for interrupting your breakfast. I just…well…it’s another busy day of writing, isn’t it? Are you making good progress on your current work in progress?”
“My daily goal is five thousand words, so…yes. Usually, I am.”
“F—” She blinks, gawks. “Five thousand?How do you have time to eat? Sleep?”
Look at him, girly. Has heslept? No.
“It’s not that many words when you break it down. I average anywhere between seven hundred and two thousand an hour.”
She pulls up a chair, plops down, scoots in.
Oh.
Okay.
We’re doing this, huh?
Where did your stutter go, lady?
I crunch my toast, watching the interaction like a bad movie.
“How?” is the woman’s illustrious question. She’s twitching slightly, as though she regrets not bringing a notepad to this interrogation.
Viktor stares at her. “How…what?”
“How do you write so many words in anhour? I can spend all day getting less than five hundred. How do you handle the constant doubts? The fears that everything you’re writing is garbage? How do you just push through and get it all out of your head?”
“I don’t really have constant doubts. I spend a few days before each book plotting a detailed outline, then I follow it. The first draft doesn’t matter. At all. You’re just puttingwords on a page. Then in the second draft hopefully you can convincingly pretend you knew what you were doing with them in the first place. Finally, once you feel you’ve done all you can, you send the draft to your editor, trusting that they’ll tell you what’s utter garbage and have some insight on how to fix it.”
The woman shudders. “Isn’t that terrifying?”
“No? It’s their job to look at garbage. As long as you’re putting in the work to make sure you aren’t repeating correctable errors they’ve already alerted you to, there’s no shame in sharing an imperfect story. They’re all imperfect in the end, no matter what we do with them, so there’s no reason to doubt. People love imperfections. It’s a staple in creating characters that are relatable.”
It’s so…cordial, isn’t it?
Where was mythey’re all imperfect in the endwhen I set my draft down in front of him ten years ago, took a deep breath through the crying nerves, and pressedsend? I wasn’t even an unsolicited, entitled fan, sending him something and expecting that he’d have time for it.
I won a giveaway. He offered a critique for some writer’s event, and I applied tirelessly, following every instruction to get entries every single day it ran. And I won.
I hadeveryright to impose.
Yet he still made me feel like an imposition.
I wasn’t interrupting anything he hadn’t agreed to, yet here he is—having a bad, exhausted day—being polite and genuine and helpful to a total stranger with less than an eighth as much reason to be here interrupting his breakfast.
Something sours in my gut, curdling the chocolate milk I grabbed at the buffet earlier.
“How do you achieve a mindset like that?” she asks, imploring his almighty hacks. “I’ve tried, and tried, but it still feels like I’m messing up every line I write. And ifthey aren’t the best they can be the first time, I just know I’ll miss something so important in editing.”
“It’s my job to make books. It’s not my job to judge them. A good editor is going to tell you what went wrong and how to fix it. All you have to do for any of your drafts is your best.”
Do your best.
