Wild Fiction

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‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking,’ Rebecca mumbled through his fingers. He let her go and she sat back and waited for the reader to make up his or her mind.
‘I think I’ve just spotted a massive hole in this concept,’ Rebecca said. ‘Big enough to drive a lorry full of reluctant publishers through. What happens when the author revises his work and spots what he wrote while he was zoning? Won’t he then change it, edit it?’
‘No, for two reasons. The first is that he’s the greatest hoarder you’ve ever come across. He hates throwing out any work he’s already done, no matter how bad it is. Look at the prose the reader’s had to put up with so far. It’s difficult to understand why they’re still reading this stuff. The second reason is that when he revises he starts to zone again. When he’s zoning, in his mind he becomes one of us. You just have to look at the way he portrays himself in this book to understand it.’
Rebecca took a minute, ran through the recent conversation in her head, and nodded back at him. ‘I see what you mean,’ she said and took a deep breath.

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