The Editor's Escalating Concern

Sent manuscript to publisher. 400 pages. Hardcover-ready. Publisher sent it back. In a smaller box.

Writer's retreat. Mountain cabin. Two weeks of isolation. Came back with 0 words. And a goat. Won't explain the goat.

"Your character arc is flat." "He's a pancake." "Metaphorically?" "Literally. Chapter 4. Witch."

Here's a fun party trick: name three famous dystopian novels. If you said 1984, Brave New World, and The Hunger Games, congratulations—you've just listed three books that owe their entire existence to a bald Russian engineer most people have never heard of. Yevgeny Zamyatin, born 142 years ago today, wrote 'We' in 1920, essentially inventing the modern dystopian genre before getting himself exiled for being too honest. George Orwell literally called 'We' the model for his own work. Aldous Huxley suspiciously claimed he'd never read it.

"You should outline first." I did. 400 pages. "That's the novel." "No, that's the outline."

"Is this autobiographical?" "The divorce, yes. The murder, not yet."