The Writer

by RB Banfield

  In his younger days they called him Maximum Velocity. The way Max Marshall could bang out a finished article faster than anyone in the newsroom could believe, made him a legend. He never made errors. No typos or spelling mistakes. His facts always faultless. As he approached middle age he slowed just a fraction and the only addition to his style was a weary cynicism. He assumed that he would work until he chose the day to retire, but his departure from city’s number three newspaper came without warning. When he was included in a group who were no longer required to work at the paper, his name disappeared from the public arena. His legend became a myth suitable only for idle discussion at the coffee machine, and with it went his desire to write. He could still drop a sentence and form a paragraph without blinking, or summon a fact without really thinking too long about it, but the passion was gone.

  They told him he was good and they hated to lose him. They told him how they had no choice, that the money just wasn’t there anymore, that losing him was like losing a member of the family. They could only keep one and five had to pay the price. They wished there was some way around it and they had looked long and hard at all the possibilities, but in the end they thought it just wasn’t fair to keep people stringing along. So, it was goodbye and hope you do well in the future in your new home, wherever that will be, and it sure isn’t here.

  They told him all the kinds of nice stuff meant to encourage him, that meant nothing when they also told him that he can no longer work for them. He had heard of others who barely got a farewell handshake, or learnt about it by email. Nobody came wishing them good luck for the future, so he should count himself lucky. He could not help but wonder that if he was that good then why throw him away? If he was that good then are they not worried he’d get snapped up by the competition? Perhaps he wasn’t that good at all. That was his conclusion. As the weeks turned to months without work it was all he could think about.

  He tried the other papers, of course, but they were not immune from the cost cutting and they weren’t thinking of hiring. If they were hiring, of course, it was doubtful they’d consider a reject from the third-best paper in town. No one said that to him but he knew they were thinking it. The only work Max could find was in editing internet articles; work he could do in his sleep, and it was almost an insult to even consider it. But he lowered himself, swallowed his dignity, and took the job, and tried to suck it up. Even then, amongst the lower standards, he found himself rewriting more than reading, amazed over the lack of professionalism. When he challenged the authors, asking them to use better English, he always got the same response: It was just the internet. If it was “just” the internet, he thought, then why was he working on it?

  The frustration caused him to start his own website, www.maxmarshall.com, where he could put up anything he wanted, free from newspaper restrictions. When he first started he chuckled at the thought of it becoming a flagship for well written articles, but it did not take long to realise that people were interested in content over style. That was when he realised that internet writing was a whole other ballgame from print media; not really better or worse, just different. If he wanted his site to be successful then he needed to be relevant and spontaneous. He also needed to have other people helping him, since if it wasn’t updated then it looked dead, and if it looked dead then no one would ever come back to for a second visit.

  He wasn’t exactly sure of the identity of all twelve of his contributors, except they were young, continually irritable, had massive chips on their shoulders, and they liked to vent their disapproval of the government no matter what the government did. The result was his site received good traffic. The controversial articles that were not necessarily the opinions of the webmaster Max Marshall, as he made sure he let everyone know. He made a hundred dollars a week from the advertising kickbacks, and that was better than most other amateurs. He had his groove back.

  It also proved useful in letting the public see his first three novels. His first effort, which was his personal favourite, Anger Angel, was a strange supernatural hodgepodge of chance-meetings between over-worldly beings and everyone who read it hated it. The next effort, Grovel Grove, a throwback story involving life in a small town, based on his own childhood, was deliberately written in a sleepy style, to appeal to the kind of reader who liked that kind of thing. He received good reviews from the odd visitor to his website, and that gave him hope to continue to promote it. Until he realised the reviews were all coming from his wife Jill who was just trying to encourage him. She didn’t understand his annoyed reaction to her help, since she had expected some kind of thanks for at least trying.

  Max’s third book, The Liberation of Cats, hit the jackpot, when he felt confident enough to post links on various free online book sites, leading to a book contract from an actual real-life publisher. A seemingly simple tale of a handicapped but ambitious young man named Albert Fangus who set about trying to find his birth-mother, leading to him meeting a series of complex yet likeably wacky individuals who all had a key to his secret past, that he was really a government experiment gone wrong. The fact that Max could not figure out an ending and so didn’t bother to include one, didn’t affect the overall story, or its popularity. It was fast-paced and ludicrous, and had a good chance of being developed into a movie. Everyone was happy, especially Jill. He was given a deal to produce three more books, all based on the same concept and, if he wanted, the same characters. He was free to call it “The Liberation” of any kind of animal he wanted. The Marshall household had never been happier.

  Doing a repeat story, or trying to continue with the character of Albert Fangus, wasn’t one bit appealing to Max. He considered himself an author of originality, not repetition, and he wanted his next book to be entirely different. This drive to be different and original caused him to be not able to produce a single new word in over three months of trying. What made this dry spell worse was news from his publisher that his book wasn’t selling. Everyone liked his book, except people who showed up to the stores. The publisher wanted him to promote it more on his website, which they thought needed jazzing up so they recommended a few specialists, at a small fee. Max refused their offer, seeing it as interference into his creativity, and took his website down in protest. His twelve irritable and well-read contributors then set up their own site and Max didn’t make any more money.

  At first Jill said nothing, knowing that he worked better if she didn’t try to help. But as the days of non-writing drifted into months she struggled to hide her frustration. She wanted him to either write something that sells or get a real job. They had been married fifteen years and were happy to have no children. Jill had a strong dislike of anyone under the age of twenty and the thought of kids running around in her house was repulsive, like screaming lizards or something equally alien. Her own school days were a bit trying as she wanted to befriend the teachers and not her classmates. Her favourite joke was to tell her friends that Max was the only child she could put up with, and they agreed with her. He knew that her friends despised him, more than they let her know. When she gave them a copy of his book about Albert Fangus they spent hours laughing over what they disliked about it, all without Jill’s knowledge.

  Max considered some of Jill’s friends to be the worst example of human life ever known, and he was happy to tell her that. When Jill claimed the same for Max’s few friends, people he visited only once in a blue moon, he agreed with her. They were all old drinking buddies, and at least two of them he hadn’t heard from for about a year, and he suspected that one had died of alcohol poisoning or some such related illness. Max himself had kept away from the booze for nearly two years, not because he had a problem, but more that he wanted show that giving it up was no hard thing. Perhaps that was why they didn’t want to talk to him lately. He shrugged off any thought of being snubbed, since he assumed that being a famous writer would eventually cause him to be surrounded by new friends.

  “I’ve finished the first chapter,” he announced from
the apartment’s small spare bedroom that he used for his writing room. It was full of stacks of papers and one needed to watch their step. It was the first words he had uttered in two hours.

  “What?” Jill asked from the laundry where she had been loading the dryer for the last hour. She had been taking her time since she was also talking on the phone; with a stylish and light headset. Five minutes later she finished her call and went to see what he wanted.

  “I think I’ve finished the first chapter,” he said again.

  “You mean you’ve finally started it? What’s this again? An article?”

  “The novel I’ve been telling you about.”

  “The one about the chimpanzees?”

  “I was never writing anything about chimpanzees.”

  “Perhaps you should?”

  “Don’t you remember, I told you?”

  “Remind me.”

  “A young woman goes to stay with her grandmother for a week or so. She wants to write a novel, get away from the big city, meet some interesting members of town. Of course, they’re wacky, small-town types who don’t get out much and get enough sun.”

  “What town’s this?”

  “Gendry.”

  “Gendry? Why that boring place? What if there aren’t any interesting people in Gendry for her to meet?”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Just saying. There must be some towns around with no interesting people in them. They can’t always be wacky. It’s such a cliché. Your readers will expect them to be wacky, so unless you make them like virtual aliens, they’re just going to be let down.”

  “I have been to Gendry, for your information, and I happen to have met some of the locals and they’re interesting enough for me to want to put them into my book, I will have you know. I have a whole bunch of them.”

  “You’re telling me you’re putting real people into your book? Can you do that? Don’t they need to sign a waiver or something?”

  “I can easily change their names. Although I do like their real names. One guy called Elbow …”

  “Who’s your main character?”

  “The young woman, Sophie.”

  “You’re writing a novel with a girl in lead? Can you do that?”

  “Why can’t I?”

  “No reason,” she said as she gave a dismissive laugh. “I have no idea what kind of a clue you’d have about what goes on in the mind of a young woman, that’s all.”

  “A writer should be able to write everyone in a realistic manner.”

  “What happens to her in Gendry? Could anything interesting ever happen to anyone who lives in Gendry?”

  “That’s why I want it there. It’s a small out-of-the-way town, where everyone knows everyone else, seemingly harmless. Seemingly safe.”

  “But not really harmless or safe? Tell me again, what happens to this girl? What was her name again?”

  “Sophie. She’s there for relaxation. A holiday, away from the big city.”

  “What motivation does she have for her relaxation? Does she have a believable back story? Can the reader relate to her? You know the reader must be able to relate to the main character or they aren’t going to read any further than the first page or so. Maybe if the reader is feeling sorry for the writer going to all the trouble of writing this story, they might give it a few chapters, depending on their generosity.”

  “What’s this I’m hearing? Suddenly you’re an expert in writing?”

  “What happens to her in Gendry?”

  “I haven’t got to that part yet.”

  “You haven’t written it, you mean? Or you don’t know yourself? Don’t tell me you’re just making it up as you go? That’s the worst kind of book. You’re not, are you? Did you want anyone to pay for it, or will it be one of those free things sitting in the bins in shadowy parts of bookstores, underneath books so bad they don’t even stack up next to the usual trash? The kind of books you see and have no idea why it was published in the first place.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with doing that, writing as you go. You never know what might happen, so it’s like real life. Set up the characters, see where they go. It’s just like what happens in real life; unpredictable, and surprising, and realistic.”

  “That’s how the worst books are written. No, really, they are. You can tell the author is making it all up as they go. You must have some kind of plan, surely, on what your story’s about?”

  “I have a plan.”

  Jill looked at him expecting him to tell her. “Well?” she asked when he didn’t.

  “You’ll just have to wait until it’s done.”

  “Can hardly wait for that,” she said sarcastically. She then went back to the laundry and thought she’d call up another of her friends.

  Max sat back in his chair and grimaced. He had not expected a harsh reaction. He had managed to start writing again and then she just about finished off any hope of continuing. She had changed so much from when they were first married, and it seemed to be getting worse. She had once been supportive of his writing, and encouraged him to take time off to write his first book. She disliked what the first book became, but she told him so gently, and helped him through the struggles with his second. When the third book was actually published she was hopeful of making money. The more it looked like that wasn’t going to happen, the more reserved she became, and her words sarcastic and cutting. Her faith in him seemed to die.

  “Entrée!” Simona announced with her high-pitched warble.

  The family’s elderly maid had been paid the same wage for the last twenty years and that was still more than she should have been getting. She pushed a wobbly cart into the large dining room and got one of the wheels stuck on a rug, as she seemed to do at least once a week. No one was allowed to help her free the wheel and sometimes she became so flustered that she would start swearing at it, with obscure phrases that made little sense. She said she was from Romania but never gave a straight answer when asked exactly what part.

  The first course of the evening was a light milky soup that Simona liked to call Crab Surprise, mostly no one had ever been able to detect any kind of fish in it. Sophie remembered that it was far better than the Oyster Surprise, where the oysters were actually dumplings drowned in Soya sauce, and Simona would fight anyone who questioned it.

  “Splendid,” said Susan in her typically regal manner, sitting at her customary place at the head of the table. She liked to talk in a formal way, but only when guests were present for the family dinner, and she expected all the dinner guests to display equally perfect manners. “And well timed, Simona.”

  “Sophie, we have a friend,” said Kerry or Jerry. “Taylor is his name, and it’s his birthday.”

  “Tomorrow, he means,” added the other twin.

  “How nice for him,” Sophie said to them, wondering why they were telling her about their friend. She did not know what was worse, that they were telling her about a boy their age for no reason, or that he was her age and they wanted to hook her up.

  “Kerry, be polite and wait for Simona to finish serving,” Susan instructed and they all watched in silence as the maid placed a small bowl in front of them, filled to the brim, with her weak and shaky hands, each time letting some of it spill out.

  “We’re planning a surprise party for him,” Kerry or Jerry continued when Simona finished and began to wheel the cart back to the kitchen.

  “We need as many people as we can get,” said the other.

  “We were wondering if you would like to attend,” said the first.

  “I take it you will also be inviting your sister, Jerry?” Susan asked.

  Sophie detected a sigh from Rebecca that she guessed was more that they could now identify which twin was which.

  “We have already invited Rebecca,” said Jerry.

  “Did you accept?” Susan asked her daughter.

  “I have accepted, mother,” she answered.

  “The new boarder will be there too,”
said Kerry.

  “Are you sure?” Sophie asked him, surprised that they would ask a grown man to attend a child’s birthday party.

  “He has known about it for weeks,” he said.

  “Has he been here for weeks?” Sophie asked Susan. “I thought he was a recent tenant.”

  “Yes, I thought he was still a newbie too,” Susan admitted. “Days can so easily turn into weeks, and before you know it months have gone by. I’m not sure when he arrived. I will have to check the signing-in book. Which I shall not be doing during the course of the family meal.”

  “Is he a friend of your friend Taylor?” Sophie asked Jerry.

  “He has never met Taylor, as far as we know,” he said. “It would be weird if he has.”

  “He’s there because we told him the whole town will be there,” said Kerry.

  “And he’d look out of place not being there,” said Jerry. “That’s what we told him.”

  “He sounds an intriguing person, from what I’ve heard of him,” said Sophie.

  “And you would be right, dear,” said Susan.

  “Don’t listen to them, Sophie,” Rebecca said as she rolled her eyes. “You aren’t missing a thing. He’s dull as.”

  “Oh, no, Rebecca,” said Susan, now slightly losing her formality, “I think Sophie will find him a very interesting character. And Jerry, you did exaggerate too much in saying the entire town will be present at your friend’s party. I for one will not be in attendance, and I know others who have not the slightest inclination of any party being staged in our midst.”

  “What my brother means,” Jerry explained to Sophie, “is it’ll seem like the whole town is there. Not that the whole town will be there. Just seem it is.”

  “And Kerry is wrong about why our boarder’s going,” added Rebecca.

  “We’re not wrong,” Jerry said in defence of his brother.