“I don’t know what I’m doing sometimes,” said Dan.
“Sometimes,” said Ben.
It was getting late, but the bar was still fairly empty.
“How many papers have you got right now?’ Ben asked.
“Five,” said Dan. “You?”
“I’d rather not say,” said Ben.
“Does that mean you have more,” said Dan, “or less, I wonder.”
“It’s not less,” said Ben, taking a drink of his beer.
“Thanks for that,” said Dan.
“How many of them actually interest you?” said Ben.
“None,” said Dan. “I don’t know what these kids are studying anymore.”
“This is news,” said Ben.
“You know what I mean,” said Dan. “You don’t need to know about a subject to write about it well, we both know that. But some of these papers, I just don’t know.”
“They gave you the materials, right?” said Ben. “And their drafts. You just have to fix them.”
“Yeah,” said Dan.
“So none are interesting,” said Ben.
“Well there’s one,” said Dan, then stopped.
“Un huh,” said Ben.
Dan took a drink.
“I wouldn’t call it interesting,” he said. “More like most especially annoying.”
“What’s it about?” asked Ben.
“That’s the thing,” said Dan. “I’m not sure the kid knows.”
“Bad research?” said Ben.
“Bad everything,” said Dan. “There’s no point to the paper, he’s trying to say like three things at the same time, it doesn’t make any sense. There’s no cohesion, there’s no point to any of it. Just words on a page.”
“So,” said Ben. “No clear thesis, I give them back.”
“Me too,” said Dan.
“I usually try to throw some ideas at them,” said Ben, “if I understand the reading, and see if they stick, but I don’t take wishy-washy work.”
“Of course,” said Dan.
“We’re groomers and polishers,” said Ben. “If there’s no clear structure, it needs to be broken and re-set; I don’t have time to do that much work for them.”
Dan looked at him blankly.
“Thanks for reminding me of all that,” he said. “For a minute there I thought we were car-washers or something.”
“I’m just saying,” said Ben.
“Yeah,” said Dan, “I know. If it’s this much trouble I should drop it and move on.”
“Well look here,” said a voice that sounded like a hazel nut tastes, “if it isn’t the famous Academy itself.”
A pretty girl with dark brown hair wearing a t-shirt with various cloth patches pinned to it with safety pins flopped into the booth beside Ben.
“Hi Alfred,” said Dan, a little sheepishly.
Ben couldn’t remember, and never asked, when Dan had started calling her by that name, or why; he believed it was some inside joke leftover from a somewhat hazy evening.
“What’s up?” asked Ben.
“Nothing much,” said Alfred, taking Ben’s glass and taking a drink. One of the patches visible read ‘FTP,’ another ‘national razor service 1792,’ another ‘Freedom Tickler.’
“Just thought I’d see what the two smartest guys in this stale old corner of the burg were up to.”
“Just talking over a professional issue with my colleague here,” said Ben, taking his glass back and moving it out of reach.
“What can we do for you?” said Dan.
“Oh nothing,” she said airily, “just thought I’d say hi. Pretend I’m not here.”
“Right,” said Ben.
“It’ll come out in a minute I guess,” said Dan.
“It always does,” said Ben.
“Now why do you automatically assume,” said Alfred, “that I have an ulterior motive? I could just be being nice.”
Ben snorted into his glass.
“The last time you were nice, Alfred,” said Dan, “was probably before you could ride a bike.”
“Actually, I never learned,” said Alfred.
“Just the broomstick then?” said Ben.
Alfred made a face.
“So what’s the problem,” said Ben, turning back to Dan.
“It’s hard to say,” said Dan.
“What’s the problem?” said Alfred.
“Dan’s got a paper he’s working on,” said Ben, “and it’s giving him some trouble.”
“You mean a paper you’re fixing?” said Alfred.
“Hey quiet,” said Dan, looking jumpy. “No talky talky.”
“You think nobody knows what you guys do?” said Alfred.
“Discretion,” said Ben, “is the better part of dishonesty.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” said Alfred.
“But if you can stand not being the center of attention for a moment,” said Ben, “we’d like to get back to what we were talking about.”
“Right,” said Alfred, turning to Dan. “What’s the problem?”
“There’s no problem,” said Dan.
“You brought it up,” said Ben.
“That was before we--” said Dan and stopped.
“Oooh,” said Alfred, “too risque for polite company? Tell me tell me!”
“It’s nothing like that,” said Dan, looking sheepish again.
“Look, if I’m bothering you,” said Alfred, half-rising.
“It’s just -- okay. So the other night, I was working on a piece I’ve had going for a while.”
“The Titans of Renewal?” said Ben without a smile.
“What’s the Titans of Renewal?” asked Alfred.
“They,” said Dan, not acknowledging the second question, “have gone back to sleep, for now. No this is just a short thing, an idea I had walking home the other night, I thought I’d see where it went.”
“Okay,” said Ben.
“So I’m working at it, and I’m putting down these short, really sharp sentences,” said Dan, “and I’m really liking the style but I don’t feel like it’s really my own, you know? And I couldn’t place where I’d lifted it from, it’s not like anything I’ve read lately.”
“Oh boy,” said Ben.
“Right,” said Dan.
“What?” said Alfred.
“I’m guessing,” said Ben, “that it was a little -- too familiar?” He made a comically alarmed face.
“Very good, you’ve cracked the case,” said Dan wryly.
“I don’t get it,” said Alfred.
“Dan is saying,” said Ben, “that he accidentally started writing like the student whose paper he’s checking over.”
“You mean fixing,” said Alfred.
“I mean fixing,” said Ben.
“And that’s a bad thing?” said Alfred.
“Depends,” said Ben with a half-shrug. “How alike was your writing to the paper?” said Ben.
“I’d rather not say,” said Dan.
“Ooooh,” said Alfred, jostling Ben’s elbow knowingly.
“Suffice to say,” said Dan, “I went back and reworked those parts, but then the flavor wasn’t there anymore, and I gave it up.” He looked out over the empty bar and took a long drink.
Ben noticed his glass was empty, took Dan’s and went to the bar.
“So what’s the problem?” asked Alfred when Ben had left.
“It’s bothersome,” said Dan, “that I couldn’t get the story back.”
“I don’t understand,” said Alfred. “So you were writing like the other guy, so what? We’re supposed to try and imitate other works in my line, it’s how we learn most of the basics.”
“Copying a hundred-year-old painting by a master is one thing,” said Dan. Alfred was a permanently semi-failing visual arts student; Dan hadn’t noticed, but he would have been willing to bet there were paint stains on her jeans. “You try to learn other people’s style to find your own, or something, right? Well for us, it’s not supposed to happen unless we want it to.”
“I don’t get it,” said Alfred.
“It’s happened to me before,” said Ben, sitting down with only two beers.
“What has?” asked Alfred, reaching for Ben’s glass. “Accidentally copying someone?”
“Picking up their style without realizing it,” he said, pulling his beer again out of her reach.
“Me too,” said Dan.
“It’s kind of our job, really,” said Ben.
“What is?” said Alfred.
“Of course,” said Dan. “To be chameleons. You can’t doctor every paper the same way, none of the professors would buy that the work was the student’s.”
“We’d be out of work in a week,” said Ben.
“So you’re saying,” said Alfred, “that you do your best to write like whoever it is whose paper you’re fixing, because if you wrote like yourselves all the time, you’d get caught.”
“That’s the game,” said Ben.
“It’s a subtle art,” said Dan, looking away and taking a drink.
“But when you started writing like them at other times,” said Alfred, “you started freaking out about it?”
“Hey,” said Dan, setting down his glass. “No one’s freaking out. It just bothered me that I couldn’t make my story work in my own voice, that’s all.”
“It’s all about how it sounds in your head,” said Ben accommodatingly. “It’s impossible to explain if you’re not a writer; you just like it one way and don’t like it the other. And when you realize the way you like it isn’t the way you would have written it, it bothers you.”
“So how do you fix it?” said Alfred.
“You don’t,” said Dan. “I usually give up and start on something else.”
“That’s lame,” said Alfred. “To just run off on a project like that. What if it’s a good idea?”
“The good ones usually come back,” said Dan.
Ben nodded.
“If they’re really good,” he said, “you won’t be able to get away from them.”
“Like the Titans of Renewal?” said Alfred.
“What did you tell her?” said Dan, glaring at Ben.
“Just that you might be famous one day,” said Ben, “and you might need an illustrator.”
“What?” said Alfred. She turned to Dan. “Really?” she said.
“Right,” said Dan, though he seemed a little red. “Well I’ll need a draft first.”
“He’ll talk to you sometime next year,” said Ben. “Maybe.”
“Maybe,” said Alfred. “So what’re you going to do about this story that’s bugging you?” she said to Dan.
“I don’t know,” said Dan. “I think I’ve dropped it.”
“Because you sounded like some student,” said Alfred.
“Pretty much,” said Ben.
Dan shrugged and made a wry face of agreement.
“And the same thing happens to you?” she asked Ben.
Ben shrugged. “Cost of doing business,” he said, and took a drink.
“Boy,” she said, shaking her head, “you two are something else.”
“What do you mean?” asked Ben.
“Yeah,” said Dan, setting his glass down.
“You two sit in here in your tower,” she said, “and talk each other up to be some great virtuoso composers of words or something, and when you find a paper that’s written better than you could write it--”
“Whoa,” said Ben, raising his hands.
“Hey, hey,” said Dan. “I never said it was written better than I could write it.”
“If it’s not better than your writing,” said Alfred, “then why don’t you like your story when it’s not written that way?”
“Because it’s not as good a story that way,” said Dan. “It just doesn’t work as well, it has nothing to do with the writing.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Alfred.
“Yes it does,” said Dan.
“No it doesn’t,” said Alfred.
“No it doesn’t,” said Ben.
“Yeah I know,” said Ben.
“And if you don’t think you’re better than that poor kid that wrote it,” said Alfred, “then why does it tear you up so much that you like his style better than yours?”
Dan didn’t say anything at first.
“I don’t think I’m better than him,” said Dan. “But he came to me to fix his writing. If I’m not good at it, why’d he ask me?”
“It’s like this,” said Ben. “Forget about better or worse, or stories working or not working. We’re writers, it’s what we do. And we do it a certain way, with a certain style and voice. In some ways that’s who we think we are. Follow?”
“Of course,” she said. “We all express ourselves the way we do.”
“Well,” said Ben, “it bothers us when we get distracted from the way we usually write by things like this, it compromises our sense of identity to a certain extent.”
“Yeah,” said Dan nodding. “Our identity.”
“It doesn’t matter if we think the students aren’t very good,” said Ben. “Sure we have more experience, and that probably counts for more than anything else. Maybe if they’d worked at this for as long as we have they’d be as good as we are or better.”
“Probably better,” said Dan helpfully.
“Almost certainly,” said Alfred.
“But,” said Dan, “what matters to us most isn’t that we be better than them or anything, it’s that we be true to ourselves. We are what we write, it’s as simple as that.”
She looked at them both blankly.
“And you really believe that heap?” she said.
“Of course,” said Ben with a straight face.
“We are what we write,” said Dan. “it’s on our business cards. If we had business cards, that is.”
She looked at them both with a skeptical air.
“Well, if I wanted no-nonsense, I should have gone to the math lab,” she said. “Instead I visit with the guys who lie for a living.”
“And how,” said Ben.
“We lie to everyone,” said Dan.
“I’m not ever sure who this guy is,” said Ben.
A large group of undergrads piled through the front doors and crowded in at the bar. Alfred eyed them speculatively. She shrugged, and seemed to drop an air.
“Either of you boys want to buy me a drink?” she said with a friendly and direct smile.
“Nope,” said Ben, raising his glass in a mock toast.
“Not this time,” said Dan, looking away and drinking again.
“Fine,” said Alfred, rising from the booth. “Later boys.”
They both watched her walk to the bar.
“Is it objectifying to watch her walk away like that?” asked Dan without turning.
“Probably,” said Ben, turning back. “That’s why I was watching television.”
“Right,” said Dan. He noticed his glass was empty, took it and Ben’s for a refill.
While he was gone Ben watched Alfred’s progress with the boys crowded at the bar; from what he could tell, she had at least two drinks paid for already. It took Dan a few minutes to get through the commotion. When he came back he had four glasses.
“Here’s what I think,” said Ben when Dan came back, accepting two of the four.
“Uh huh,” said Dan, sitting down.
“I think you should write the whole story, however it comes to you,” he said. “If it sounds like this student of yours don’t worry about it. Let the whole thing out where you can look at it, then worry about style.”
“Hmm,” said Dan. “That’s probably why it’s still bothering me, I never got to find out what happens next.”
“Exactly,” said Ben.
“If all else fails,” said Dan, brightening, “I could just give all the parts that don’t sound like me to a character to speak them.”
Ben looked approving, and pointed while holding his glass.
“What about writing only as I do?” said Dan.
“Please,” said Ben, taking a drink.
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