by Ben Parris

To me, a manuscript is to be respected as a pristine document, so it must be constrained with the utmost precision. If you’re a writer, you’ll know what I mean.

I’m okay now, but my original procedure for going over my manuscript drafts was to have no one see the first draft for nine months while it soaked in olive oil. If that came out all right, I had a really trusted friend submit her comments over tea, followed by two people from a writer’s group who would have a violent disagreement over what direction it should take.

This could only be resolved by a group of 6 beta readers who read it while they hung upside down like bats. Then I would use a device called a sawzall to cut the first 75,000 words, and feed the remainder to a grammar software program called Usuck.

From there it went to a modest twelve member church choir who would add spiritual gusto. They would pass it off to team of 25 self-styled “Oompa Loompahs” who would test it for sweetness and then package it in an unnatural positon. Thus primed, it would go to a team of 535 people to be brow beaten in a procedure we called “a Congressional hearing.”

Lastly, a firefighter would hit the smoking wreck with a hose, and a circus performer would fire it out of a cannon as it was tracked by satellite.
Then I found out that you actually have to publish it.

Right now I am following the process I employ when I’m between books, which is to go to a writing seminar on H.G. Wells’ Island of Dr. Moreau where I sit with other frustrated half-men and learn such rules as “Do not go on all-fours,” and “Do not claw the bark of trees.”