I backed away from rewriting NYPD Blood because it would have been too damn much to handle -- both time-committment-wise and emotionally -- but I stupidly said I'd help the guy publish it, since I've already done that a couple times with my own work. Well...in order to publish it, the document has to be in a certain format. So he sent me his version, in Word, and I started going through the story to update it, because he swore he had it proofed by someone else. Which was bullshit, because it is so god-awful a mess, I started editing for grammar and spelling. Meaning I had to read it. And I'm wondering just how much of a masochist I fucking am.
But there's something in me that just can't let it go out like that. Books are damn near sacred to me, and to allow this thing to march past, as is, with my help goes against everything I am. Everything I want to be.
The new title is French Connection Blues. I got through 65 pages while flying between Baltimore and Albuquerque, out of 354. And there were massive numbers of errors on just about every page. No commas or even periods to end a sentence. New paragraphs beginning in the middle of a sentence. Dialogue jammed together with quotation marks in the wrong places. I tried to justify it as being experimental in the telling, kind of like Ulysses...but that was bull. It was simply rewritten by a man bordering on illiterate.
Still I'm sucking it up and not changing a thing except the mistakes...even though some parts don't really make sense, anymore, because he cut out the set-up for them. And he's added bits that come out of nowhere. But it's his story now; all I will let myself do is proof it. And thank god I've got a good copy of the book I wrote. I'm not putting my name on this one.
This is why I suck at collaboration...because this isn't the first time my work's been fucked up by somebody else, and it wrecks me every time. Now I think I'm close to the point where I'd probably have killed the motherfucker for so perfectly fucking up the story I wrote. Fortunately, he's in Florida and I have no idea where. And I do not want to see him, again. Ever.
One more thing -- I'm never writing anybody else's story ever again.
But there's something in me that just can't let it go out like that. Books are damn near sacred to me, and to allow this thing to march past, as is, with my help goes against everything I am. Everything I want to be.
The new title is French Connection Blues. I got through 65 pages while flying between Baltimore and Albuquerque, out of 354. And there were massive numbers of errors on just about every page. No commas or even periods to end a sentence. New paragraphs beginning in the middle of a sentence. Dialogue jammed together with quotation marks in the wrong places. I tried to justify it as being experimental in the telling, kind of like Ulysses...but that was bull. It was simply rewritten by a man bordering on illiterate.
Still I'm sucking it up and not changing a thing except the mistakes...even though some parts don't really make sense, anymore, because he cut out the set-up for them. And he's added bits that come out of nowhere. But it's his story now; all I will let myself do is proof it. And thank god I've got a good copy of the book I wrote. I'm not putting my name on this one.
This is why I suck at collaboration...because this isn't the first time my work's been fucked up by somebody else, and it wrecks me every time. Now I think I'm close to the point where I'd probably have killed the motherfucker for so perfectly fucking up the story I wrote. Fortunately, he's in Florida and I have no idea where. And I do not want to see him, again. Ever.
One more thing -- I'm never writing anybody else's story ever again.
2 comments:
UGH... sounds like a lot of tedious work.
Makes me wonder how many mistakes you see on my blog. :-/
Mac, your blog is great. Me, I can go back to posts I made on JTC and still find errors, after having proofed them 2-3 times. It's tedious and irritating, but I'm prone to typos...and slight dyslexia.
But what this guy did...it's maddening.
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