Contest time, and as usual, I’m the person who has to put the whole thing together, and it is a problem since she is one of our best writers, and I’m not sure which stories of hers I should submit.
So, I asked our former temporary boss about it.
He still talks to her even though she has left for other jobs, but rarely mentions her to me except to repeat the same spiel she’s fed the two office gossips about her great plans to move up – yet when it came to telling him the important things, she did not – such as when she resigned and he found out from others in the office.
I think he’s still hurt about that, only he doesn’t blame her. He blames the owner for being so cheap, and the conditions under which such a creative genius like her has to work (with the rest of us non-genius types chugging along unrecognized as well.)
Since she is no longer with the company, I asked him if he would select which of her stories we should submit to the various contests. I assumed he would agree and contact her. Instead, he only shook his head and said, “I don’t want to have to decide which of her stories are best.”
Since almost all of her stories were good enough to win, he could have picked anything. Yet, I got the impression he’s afraid he might offend her somehow, completely puzzling since he worked so closely with her and had a much more intimate knowledge of her work. I could have picked stories for her, but I thought he would be better at doing so.
He just refused to express an opinion as if terrified he might fall out of her favor if he picked one story over another story she might have thought better.
Finally, I reached out to one of the other writers who I knew still retained close contact and asked her to ask her what stories I should include.
“She doesn’t want to have anything to do with it,” this writer said, after she made several frustrating attempts to reach her.
A closer look at the body of her work confirmed what she wrote about her self when working in the restaurant in New York, how she started out with a bang only to fade over time.
But for different reasons. The work load in our office was too intense for someone as creative as she is to maintain – not to mention the lack of pay. Frankly, I’m shocked she could keep up the high level of her poetry during this time.
I could have picked scores of her stories which would have won prizes. But since she made it clear to the other writer, she didn’t want to bother, I dropped the whole thing and got on with putting together lesser quality stories, some of which were mine.
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