I have a professor who recently retired. He’s in his early 80s and is such a grandpa.
He emailed me the other day asking if he could read what I’m working on (bold of him to assume I was actually writing). He’s probably one of the professors I’m closest to. He helped me put together my portfolio for my MFA, and later my MLIS application (when I dropped out of my MFA, he had words and was very tough on me while I was applying to library school). We still email every once in a while with life updates and cat videos.
Apparently retirement is boring, so he thought of me and my writing.
I told him I was working on something, but I didn’t think it would interest him because it wasn’t exactly original and wasn’t something I ever planned to publish (he was pretty anti-fanfiction when I was in college). Plus, NO ONE in my real life knows I write fanfiction. It’s my secret identity. I’m taking it to the grave. My sister knows to toss my computer and phone into a fire if I die, but she doesn’t know why.
Well…the man convinced me to send him the manuscript for The Monsters Who Loved Him.
This guy has published so many beautiful books. He’s one of the best writers I know, so it was pretty daunting. And he’s a slow, thoughtful reader. It took him forever to finish it.
We emailed back and forth the entire time he was reading. I reread the story alongside him, biting my nails the whole way.
He pointed out some “common rookie mistakes people make these days,” and told me, “I taught you better than to write like that. Stop that.” (He freaking loves me).
We dug deep into the characters—which ended up being his favorite part of the story. He loved Charlie and thought I based Sandoval on him (I didn’t). He also had a lot of thoughts about the formatting of Chapter 5. Lol. He wrote an award-winning verse novel, so he knows a thing or two about verse and the formatting choices I made there.
He suggested a handful of minor edits (which I recently made) and some major edits (which I’m choosing to ignore. He’s used to it).
Was this a nerve-wracking experience? Yes. I’m still feeling that leftover anxiety. But was it fun? Yes. It was.
It was so much fun talking about my work without feeling embarrassed by it. Fanfiction deserves to be taken seriously, and he treated it like a serious piece of writing. He analyzed the heck out of it and discussed it in the same way he used to discuss my assignments in college.
He did say, “You still write too damn much.”
I’m choosing to ignore that.
He also said, “Stop writing fanfiction and write an original story.”
I’m ignoring that too.
And he’s currently reading other Charlisle fics so he can better understand the ship. Retirement has changed the man.
Charlisle writers, just know that an 80-something-year-old man is currently making his way through your stories. Lurking as a guest and probably writing notes.
Anyway, he distracted me from writing for a while, but I’m finally getting back to it today.
