An Opportunity Found

I, Jeffrey Winter, have given up as a writer. Publishers never look twice at anything that I have ever submitted to them. Sometimes, I swear, it is like they never even looked once. That was even true of the one publisher here in town. After three rejections, I decided I did not want to go through that pain again.

I guess that I will have to be content with being a teacher of English at a community college, someone who may inspire one of my students to become a successful writer. It is possible, and I will finally be contributing something meaningful to the literary world.

There has only been one writer of note in my town, a man by the name of Danny McDaniel. He was a generation ahead of me, and was an inspiration to me when I was in high school. I have all of his books. His wife Jessica was my English teacher, and we have never lost contact.

Danny’s Death

When Danny died, I called Jessica up to give her my sincere condolences, and to ask when the funeral was. She cried at first, and then asked if I could do her a ‘big favour’. Danny’s ‘literary room’ was a mess, and she needed ‘a literary man’s help’ to sort out the ‘literary debris’ as she called it.  I said that I would. It being a Saturday morning, I drove over to her place, and began helping her. The literary debris had to be organized so that she could send copies of the books he wrote to the local library, and the community college where I teach, and ‘trash most of the rest’.

There were, of course, a lot of books piled up in a room little bigger than a closet. I had read all of his works and had copes signed, so I didn’t think about asking for them, or saying yes when Jessica offered some. I kept piling his works into fairly large boxes for donations to the library, book stores and for my school. Our students could certainly put them to good use.

I loaded them into the back seat and trunk of my car. When I returned I noticed there had been one old small box that I had not yet seen. It had been buried beneath the novels. It contained no more than a thick pad of paper mostly filled with writing in Danny’s hand.

I got excited when I thought that it might contain a novel he had never had published. My excitement soon dropped when I flipped through the pages and noticed that it had not been completed. The hero of the story was left suspended in deep trouble. Jessica looked at it and shook her head and said, “That’s the one that Danny never finished. He kept saying year after year that he would, but he eventually declared, ‘That book has lost its voice. It no longer speaks to me. I think that I should just throw it out.’ Of course, you know now that he never did.”

“Well, Jeffrey, how would you like to have it. I don’t want it here.”  I nodded my head.  Then the unexpected happened. She was quiet for about a minute, looking thoughtful, and said the most amazing thing to me. “How would you like to finish it for him? I know that he would have liked that.  He enjoyed being a guest lecturer in your classes. What do you think?”

At first I thought that that was a crazy idea. How could I finish it when the multi-published Danny, who wrote only half a novel with it, never completing it after years of thinking that he could. But then, with an inner voice much like that of the old man himself, I told myself that I should. It could possibly lead to so much. But then it could just be another failure, one that lets a friend down.

That last thought did not stay with me long. Unlike my defeatism of the past, I made that negative thought disappear like a small cloud in big wind. A large part of the novel was written by a master, and it could inspire me to write approaching his level.

The Next Day

The next day I woke up early and read carefully through Danny’s incomplete work. I began to feel as I  read it through that this story had a voice for me.  It spoke to me.  I could finish it!

           I had to make a few decisions about my completing the novel. Should I hand write it, as he had done? Or should I type it as I had done with my failed novels of the past? Not a lot of thought went into deciding to continuing this first copy by hand alone, machine free. I could then edit the whole thing while typing it the completed version.

           My next decision was just as difficult. Where should I write it? I didn’t want to do so in my office, where all my failures had been written. I phoned Jessica and asked her where Danny had written the first part (as I was now calling it) of ‘our novel’ (as I was now calling it). Having lived with a prolific and quirky writer most of her life, she was not surprised by what I had asked her.

           “He wrote this unfinished work in his office here at home. After rejecting it, he started writing all his later novels outside, under the chestnut tree in the backyard”. 

I asked her whether I could have a few leaves from that tree, so that I might be similarly inspired. She laughed then uttered a very loud and celebratory YES!”

And So I Began

On Mondays, I only have one class, and that is late in the afternoon. That morning I spread the chestnut leaves in front of me, and sat on a chair underneath our backyard pine. I started the first part of my contribution to our novel with the words, “And now young Tim changed his mind. He thought to himself that he would have to do important things differently if he was ever to be happy in the future. He needed to drastically alter his ways.”

           I made him a very different character than he had been in Danny’s part of the novel, but in such a way that his change might seem believable to the reader. Even though they would know that the book had two authors, I was never going to tell anyone where Danny’s writing ended and mine began. Only Jessika and my wife Annie would know. And I made Annie swear to secrecy, on pain of my telling her friends her recipe for her very popular cheesecake. She laughed and then made a solemn oath, crossing her heart.

I wrote at a steady pace every day, speeding up as I came to the finish. I then went to Danny’s grave and told him what I had done. When I informed the local publisher that Danny and I had written this work together, acceptance was declared quickly. Soon after that I began writing my own novel with an optimism I hadn’t ever felt before. It was soon accepted after my submission. I had literally found my success as a novelist.