Writer in a Born Free RV

It was at night that I really got to know her. The place officially closed up at midnight, but a few of us stayed until one to clean up. The counter girls washed all the tables and swept and mopped the dining area floor. The people cooking cleaned their equipment. My cleanup job was to clean the fryers, then collect all the trash and carry it out to the dumpster. After everybody else had gone, I mopped the prep room floor.

Mel stayed until I dumped the mop bucket, then made an inspection tour. If all was to her satisfaction, she and I went out the back door and she locked it behind her.

It was during that last half-hour or so that we had a chance to talk, and the conversation was really interesting.

Mel was a little reserved with me at first. Mostly, she wanted to know about me. At first, all I told her was I was trying to become a writer. She asked what I wrote and I said so far, I'd written reviews of places I'd been. She laughed then.

"So, are you going to write a review of Burger King? Do you actually think anybody would read it?"

I said what I wrote wasn't that type of review and went on to tell her what I did write -- an honest opinion of what there was to see in state parks and the other tourist attractions I'd been to.

She then said something that made me re-think what I was trying to do.

"I read a lot, but I never read anything like that. What makes you think anybody else would?"

I didn't have an answer for her, and that was because I'd never tried to find out if there was a market for what I was writing. When I got back to the Born Free that night, I did.

What I found made me feel really stupid. Nowhere did I find even a rating for things like travelogues or reviews of parks, restaurants, or other tourist sites. Instead I found that there are five types of writing that generate any significant income to the authors at all. Of those, horror stories rank number five, Sci-Fi and fantasy -- number four, Inspirational and Religious -- number three, Mystery -- number two, and the top category is Romance and Erotica.

When I looked at those categories I realized why I'd gotten all those rejection notices. I'd been writing for a market that didn't exist. Well, it did, but it was so small the writers who were successful at it were probably essentially employees of the magazine.

If I was going to succeed as a writer, I'd have to change what I was writing. When I looked at the top five categories, it was easy to eliminate two. I've never been a fan of horror stories and didn't think I could ever write one that would sell. I was also not particularly religious. The inspirational stuff, well, I'd always been taught that you had to inspire yourself, so I probably wouldn't do well at that either.

Mystery was also not something I thought I could probably do. I'd read a few mystery novels and the plots were extremely complex in order to keep the reader guessing about who was the guilty party.

That left Sci-Fi and Romance and Erotica. With my math background and logical mindset, I could maybe write Sci-Fi that would make sense to a reader. Romance was something with which I had very little experience, so that was out. Erotica -- well, I wasn't sure what that entailed. Was it like writing a porn movie or was it writing a love story with more exposed skin?

I decided the only way to find out was to read. Before my shift started the next afternoon, I went to a bookstore and bought two books from the Sci-Fi section and two from the Romance section.

Over the next two weeks, I read all four books and decided Sci-Fi was a genre I could probably write. I also decided to try a few short stories. Ultimately, I wanted to write novels, and everything I'd read said most successful novelists started out by writing short stories. My plan was to write one and then send it to a magazine that specialized in science fiction stories.

The subject of my short story would be alien abduction, and the plot would center on a man who is abducted, taken to a large ship, and forced to undergo several tests and examinations before being returned to Earth. When he gets back to his home, he finds out the same thing has happened to two of his close friends. The three of them decide not to tell anyone else and live their lives in seclusion. I started doing some research into people who claimed to have been abducted. A week later, I started writing.

It was a couple weeks later that Mel started to open up to me. She told me she was starting to trust me when she didn't think she'd ever trust another man again. When I thanked her and then asked why she thought I was different, she told me a little about her life.

She'd married a guy who was a long-haul trucker. She'd been married for almost a year when she found out her husband had not just one, but two girlfriends, one in Los Angeles and one in Charlotte. He apparently wasn't very smart about it.

She found out one day when he was home and his cell phone beeped. He always got text messages from his dispatcher for what loads were available and she didn't want him to miss a good load. She knew he didn't have a password on his phone so she read the text message.

Mel only said the message was a picture of a woman and two words, "Missing You", but I gathered the woman in the picture didn't have many clothes on.

That made her suspicious, so she flipped down through her husband's text messages and found another from a different phone number. There was no picture with this one. The message just said, "Still horny. When you cum back and fuck me again?"

Mel said she confronted her husband with the texts and he didn't deny anything. What he told her was if she'd been willing to come with him, he wouldn't have had to find other women.

"He seemed to think that not having me to screw every night was reason enough. You're a man. Would you do something like that to your wife?"

I said if I had a wife, no, I'd never do that to her and I couldn't understand why any man would. Mel just frowned.

"That's what most men say, but as soon as they're married they go chasing after the next set of big boobs they see. He told me that too, that my boobs were too little and my butt was too big. I'm not fat, not at all. My butt is just the way it is, and I can't help it if I'm only a B cup instead of a D. That's what the one in Los Angeles is and I don't think her boobs are sexy. They're so big they hang down almost to her belly button unless she's wearing a bra.

"I fixed him good though. I'd written down both phone numbers when I saw those texts. I told him I wanted a divorce and if he didn't give me what I wanted, I'd call both his girlfriends and tell them about each other.

"He didn't seem to care if we stayed married or not, so he agreed as long as I didn't ask for alimony and promised not to call his girlfriends. At that point, I didn't want anything from him. My lawyer said I should at least get our car and half of our checking and savings account so I'd have enough to get around, so that's what I asked for as the settlement. He signed those over to me and then left in his truck for California. That's the last time I saw him."

I also learned that Mel probably didn't have to work. Her father had been a carpenter and bought old houses and fixed them up. Once they were livable again, he rented them out. He died unexpectedly from a heart attack, and Mel inherited the six houses. She didn't tell me how much income they generated, but she said it was enough if her dad had lived long enough to retire, he'd have been able to do about anything he wanted to do.

The more I learned about Mel, the more I liked her. There was a side to her that was all business, the side she showed all the employees, but I was seeing another side. She was a woman who'd been in a failed marriage and was still trying to get over it. I hoped I was helping her with that by what we talked about.

Some of what we talked about was what we wanted in the future. I said I wanted to become a writer who could support himself and a family by writing. Mel said she thought that was going to be pretty hard to do, but if I worked hard, I was smart enough to do it.

Mel wanted a family more than anything in the world. As she put it, "I thought my ex and I would have a couple of kids. He'd drive and I'd stay home and take care of them. When he'd come home, we'd have picnics and do things together. I still want that, but now that I've seen how a marriage can turn out, I'm not sure if it'll ever happen for me. I'd have to find the right guy, and so far, I haven't."

I kept writing by using bits and pieces of my research to put my main character, a farmer named Bill Watts, into a situation where he was trying to find a missing cow one night. He was looking in the trees that bordered his pasture when he saw a bright light overhead. Seconds later, he found himself paralyzed and being lifted up by some unseen force. He ended up strapped down to a table without really understanding where he was or how he got there.

I wrote about the examinations other abductees had related like anal probes and helmet things that were put on their heads that made their minds go blank. I wrote about the little gray men who hovered over Bill while they did those examinations.

The short story ended when Bill was telling two of his closest friends about the experience. They looked at each other and then told him they'd had the same experience but had never told anyone. Instead, they had moved onto the farm one of them owned and were doing their best to stay away from people. Bill decides no one will ever believe him, and asks if he could join them.

Looking back, that whole story was just plain stupid, but it took Mel to tell me that before I realized it. One night, out of the blue, she asked me if I was still trying to become a writer. I said I was, but that I'd changed to writing science fiction. She grinned then.

"I read sci-fi novels sometimes. When you get something written, let me read it. I'll tell you if it's any good or not."

Well, I wasn't sure that was a good idea. I mean, Mel was a pretty smart woman where Burger King was concerned, but all the education she had was high school. I was a college graduate and my high school English teacher said I was a natural born writer. Still, she was my boss, and I didn't want to sour what was up to that point, a pretty good relationship.

"Well, I just finished my first. It's still a rough draft, but I'll let you read it if you want. It's on my laptop. I can email it to you or I can print it out."

The next day I printed my story because that's what Mel said she'd prefer and I gave it to her just before we locked up. She said she'd read it and tell me what she thought.

The next night, Mel didn't say anything to me until we were the only people left. I was mopping up the prep area when she walked up. She's always called team members by their last name before, like Miss Avers or Mister Gibson, but this time, she used my first name.

"Todd, I read your short story this morning. It's...well...it wasn't very good. I mean, the way you write is fine, but the subject and what the people did...I just couldn't get into it."

Like I said, I'd been hesitant about showing Mel my writing, and now she'd proven my hesitancy to be right. I thought I'd written a pretty good short story, but she didn't like it. At first, I figured that was probably because she didn't understand it. When I thought about that for a second though, I realized it was probably people like Mel who would pay for a book if they thought the story was worth reading. I needed to find out why she didn't like it.

"Uh...Mel, I thought it was pretty good. What part didn't you like?

Mel smiled.

"You won't like this. I didn't like any of it."

When I asked her why, Mel said, "Let's finish up and then go get a cup of coffee somewhere that's still open. This is gonna take a while."

Mel was locking the back door when she saw me unlocking my bike.

"Todd, let's take my car. The only place I know that's still open is five miles from here."

That place was a Denny's and it was actually seven miles from the Burger King. Once the waitress brought our coffee, Mel started to explain.

"The first problem with your short story is it's been done a million times already. It's like you read every account by a person who claimed to be abducted by aliens and then wrote that all that happened to your guy. That worked for the first couple of novels, but after that...well, there was no suspense. I knew what was going to happen before I read it.

"The second thing I didn't like was you didn't write anything that told me why your guy reacted like he did. Most people would have called the police and reported it, but your guy only told his two best friends. Why was that? Was he just a really reserved person? Why didn't he tell somebody who could have helped him?

"Real people would have been terrified or at least scared a lot, but your guy kept it all to himself. If he'd told several people and they didn't believe him, you'd at least have been able to have him try to convince them.

"It was also too much of a coincidence that the two people he did tell had been abducted too. I mean, what are the chances of that really happening? You also said those two moved onto a farm and stayed away from other people. If they did that, how did he get in touch with them? Why would he want to move in with them and why would they let him? Are they all gay? I don't know about you, but two men who live together raises my suspicions unless they're college students. Three is...well...most men I've known would rather live alone than with another man.

"The last thing that was wrong is probably a woman thing, but as I was reading, I kept waiting for your guy to tell his wife or girlfriend about what happened and for her to either sympathize with him or figure he'd lost his mind. Either would have helped, but you never mentioned a wife or a girlfriend.

"I'm sorry, Todd. I know being sorry doesn't help, but that's what I felt when I read it."

In less than five minutes, Mel had pretty much crushed my opinion of my writing and my ability to write anything that would sell. I shook my head.

"I guess I'm not cut out to be a writer then."

Mel reached across the booth and patted my hand.

"Todd, I didn't say that. All I said was that your short story wasn't very good. Your writing style is really good. You didn't use words I had to look up to understand and you didn't write a bunch of words that didn't mean anything to the story. A lot of books I've read have both. I think the writers do it to show us common people how smart they are. Well, they may be smart, but I don't ever buy their books again so how smart is that?"

I probably sounded whiny, but that's how I felt.

"Then what can I write that you'd like to read? If you like it, other people might like it too."

Mel smiled a shy little smile.

"If I tell you that, you'll think I'm weird, but I'm not. I can tell you I'm just like at least ninety percent of all women. The other ten percent just lie."

"OK, I promise not to think you're weird. What do you like reading the most?"

Mel looked down at her coffee cup while she spoke.

"I like to read about a real man and a real woman and how real men and real women act in real life."

I said she was talking about a romance story, but Mel shook her head.

"It doesn't have to be a romance novel. It can be anything, a romance novel or a sci-fi novel or a mystery story, but the people have to relate to each other like real men and real women would relate. If there's some romance, all the better. Women like to read about the strong guy sweeping the girl off her feet. It makes us feel good to imagine that happening to us."

Mel looked at her watch then.

"Good God, it's almost two. By the time you ride your bike home, it'll be three. Since I've just made you feel bad by telling you I didn't like your story, how about if we go back to Burger King, you put your bike in the back of my car, and I drive you home? Maybe that'll make up for what I just said a little."

Over the next three days, I re-read the sci-fi and romance novels I'd bought, but this time, I read them with an eye for what Mel had told me. What I found made me feel pretty stupid that I hadn't seen it the first time.

In all four books, there was some sort of attraction between one of the men and one of the women, and that created a sort of second plot that wove in and out of the main plot. The guy might be piloting a spaceship through territory known to be infested by space pirates, but his concern was more for what would happen to his female co-pilot than what would happen to his ship. The ruthless businessman might do anything to eliminate the competition until he meets the female owner of a small company he's trying to run out of business.

In the sci-fi novels, the ultimate end -- sex -- was only hinted at, but in one of the romance novels, things got pretty explicit. In both, the main characters played the same game of seemingly innocent seduction until they both realized they were a lot closer than they thought.

I also thought more about the subject I'd written about. Mel was right about that too. All I'd done was put the stories of people who claimed to have been abducted into different words. I hadn't given any real thought to a different situation or a different plot.

I started trying some "what if" subjects in my mind.

What if aliens landed but they didn't look much different from humans? What if they did look a lot different than humans but a female human decided she liked one of the alien males. Was it possible for them to actually cross the barrier of body type and as Mel had said, to relate, meaning they had sex? If they did, would there be children?

Another idea was a space ship from Earth landing on a supposedly uninhabited planet and finding out there were aliens living there, but finding out the aliens were technologically superior even though they were only a foot tall. How would that work out? Would the Earthers all be either killed or enslaved by the aliens, or would the reverse happen? Would some Earther decide they were in love with a foot-tall alien?

The next idea was a little scary, but I couldn't get it out of my head.

What if a teacher had a student who was older than most in her class because she wasn't very smart? What if that teacher really liked that student? What if, after she turned eighteen and quit school, she met him somewhere and they fell in love? Could it ever work out? What if she wasn't smart where books are concerned but was a really hard worker who kept the house clean and was a great cook? What if she was a really great lover?

That thought bothered me because I knew where it came from. I was thinking about Marsha and wondering what happened to her. She'd be almost eighteen by now. Was she cleaning hotel rooms or was she married with a kid on the way? Maybe she was a single mom struggling with a kid and being able to support them both.

The more that thought nagged at me, the more it became an obsession. I wanted to write it if only to give myself some imaginary closure to a sad story. I started that Saturday morning and wrote until Sunday night. When I finished, I had about ten thousand words that mostly came from my heart instead of my mind.

At work the next evening, I told Mel I'd written something else, and had printed her a copy if she wanted to read it. Mel said she'd be happy to read it, but to not feel too bad if she didn't like it.

I was on pins and needles until I went to work the next night. For some reason I really didn't understand, I needed Mel to like something I'd written. It wasn't logical at all, but I was beginning to understand that feelings mean more to most people than anything else even though it wasn't logical for them to be that way. I was surprised to find that included me.