“I think you should drop ‘The Phone’.”
“I’m just not sure where it’s going as a story; I think readers will be confused.”
“Yes I can see there’s conflict there, but I’m left thinking: ‘So what?’ A guest asks to use the house phone; the waiter checks with the manager; the manager refuses; the waiter lets the guest use it anyway; the manager balls him out. Yes, there’s conflict, I just don’t see that it’s worth telling.”
“So what, that the waiter is putting the guest first? The manager is thinking of cost, precedent, whatever, and I can see many readers agreeing with him and not the waiter.”
“Okay, it’s autobiographical, but why should we be interested in a minor incident from a time when so much else must have been going on in your life? I mean, we get no sense that this story is happening in Snowdonia: where’s the sense of place? There must be so much more you could tell, of innocence lost or something.”
“How is it that this is about innocence lost?”
“But that’s a different story. The way you’ve written it, your older self’s less challenging relationship to authority isn’t explored at all. There’s no hint of regret or admiration for the younger ‘you’. Don’t you see how it’s all wrong?”
“Hello?”
“Hello?”
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