THE VOICES
By Interstitial
5. LETTER OF CORRECTION
TALLINN — NOVEMBER 28
I have a few important corrections to add, points which I’ve also made directly—and quite forcefully—to the ‘author’. As I suspected, they are just starting to make things up, and that won’t do at all.
Point one is that it was a pear, not an orange. When I explained this to the ‘author’, they counterargued that the orange is a more interesting device, because of the ritual anticipatory peeling of the fruit. All very well, I said, but it isn’t true, and if that isn’t true, how is the reader to know what else isn’t true? Well?
Point two is that the email trails with Takeshi have been significantly abbreviated. When challenged on this, the ‘author’ said it runs to several thousand words, is deeply technical at points, reminisces extensively about events that aren’t relevant, and in any case would be far too boring to transcribe in full. Well, maybe they are right, but attention to detail is important, is it not, and sins of omission are surely equally as important as sins of commission? How is anyone to know what else has been left out?
Point three is that the ‘author’ appears to be interleaving several different narratives here. The purpose of this is beyond me. Surely people just want to read the facts, from A to B to C, in the correct order, without all this chopping and changing about during the set-up? You could bullet point the whole thing, I said, in a third of the length, and cut all that dialogue out as well. No, said the author, it’s called ‘The Voices’ for a reason. Whatever; I will let them run with it for the time being. I certainly don’t have time to be editing all this.
As a side note, the ‘author’ has also asked to spend some private time with Helena in order to get a better, quote, ‘feel’ for her character. Perhaps later. I dare say they will enjoy the experience.
Anyway, I have a flight to catch now. I’m going to keep a close eye on proceedings from here on in, and if required step in and give the ‘author’ a further lesson—in the basement, if necessary.