I had a dream last night that I was at a restaurant or café or someplace like that—there was no food on the table, but we were in public somewhere—for a meeting with three other fiction writers, one woman and two men, and we were going to write a collection of stories together. Actually, we were going to pair up and write stories together and then all of the stories would be put into a collection. We would be working with similar characters and themes and styles; in the end, the collection would seem as if one person had written it. I think, perhaps, the plan was to have a pen name for the group—one made-up author. (Perhaps Madeleine Moorhead? That’s an aside, Readers, not part of the dream.)
I was familiar with these other writers; we had been brought together by friends that we had in common. The other three writers were published writers, more well-known than I was, but they thought I was talented and were treating me as an equal partner in the scheme. Perhaps “scheme” is not the right word, perhaps “project” is better, though the purpose of this arrangement was so that we could write this collection very quickly, certainly quicker than we would have been able to write a complete collection of stories on our own. (Yes, this sounds like a dream I would have, doesn’t it, Readers?)
The other writers started talking about prose that they admired; they were all in agreement. They liked beautiful descriptive phrases, long sentences with many, many words—in essence, they all liked the kinds of writing that I despise. I stayed silent. I feared that if I disagreed with them, I would reveal myself as a fraud and get kicked off the project. And this would be a very public humiliation; I would be rightfully ridiculed and then tossed out of the diner.
That’s all I remember….
But not much mystery there, right, Readers, as to what it all means…
