My great friend Megan Lucier has been a consistently excellent editor for me since I first began writing. Not only has she peppered me with solid insights, suggestions, questions and challenges to my drafts, she has also been a terrific cheerleader, demanding that I keep churning out those subsequent chapters so she can find out what happens next. Every writer should have a Megan in their lives.
Which is why it was more than a little surprising when she threw the manuscript for Shelter Me out the window.
She would beg to differ, of course. She would say it was sucked out.
I had made many changes to the first draft, and asked her to take a fresh look at it. I printed off the several hundred pages, hole punched them, put them in a nice binder and even attached a new red pen with a ribbon tied to one of the clasps. She read it over the summer and made countless notes. Well, she said she made countless notes. I never actually saw them.
She and her husband were on their way to a wedding in northern Vermont, driving up I-89 at what could be considered near-felonious speeds. They were late; she said it was his fault, he said it was hers. Again, I wasn’t there, I wouldn’t know. But since they were barely speaking to each other, Megan figured it was a good opportunity to put in some time on my manuscript.
As she read, a bee dropped out of her hair and onto the page. Quick to respond, she rolled down her window and attempted to toss the bee out, using my manuscript as a kind of shovel. Out went the bee, with the binder following quickly after. She screamed, scaring the heck out of her husband, Mark. He reports that when he glanced in the rear-view mirror, it looked like a snow storm in August, pages fluttering everywhere across the highway. A huge truck burst through the mess seconds later, the driver none too pleased at this bizarre exhibition of apparent road rage. At that speed, there was no way to pull over, of course, and even if they had, no way to pick up the pages without getting themselves killed. Besides, they were still late for the wedding.
She called me immediately from her cell phone, and we alternately laughed and yelled at each other. (Me: “Megan, how could you do this to me!?” Her: “It wasn’t my fault! There was a bee! Mark was driving too fast!”) I had this strange urge to race up there and rescue my poor orphaned pages, each with my name printed across the bottom, worried that someone might gather them up and use them for nefarious purposes. What those purposes might be I never was able to fully conjure, but I felt worried all the same. A book is like your child; you feel undeniably bound to protect it.
A week later I was traveling up this same road on my way to pick up my daughter from camp. I searched for those pages, having grilled Megan and Mark about the exact spot where it happened. There wasn’t a trace, not even a fluttering scrap of white skittering along the breakdown lane to indicate that my poor novel had ever been dismembered there.
At this time I would like to offer my deepest apologies to the Vermont Highway Department. (I have a picture in my mind of a bunch of guys wearing florescent orange vests, saying, “Hey I got page 142, who’s got 143?”) I’m sorry for all the time you obviously spent cleaning up the mess. There’s a Pology Cake with your names on it.