Chapter 135: Except for Jima, all sentient beings suffer
Owen Greene’s workload these past few days included delivering a stack of manuscript paper to Jima, but Jima, feeling lazy, hadn’t looked at it.
She picked up the manuscript and began to read, scanning ten lines at a time.
“The flow of the writing is decent, the reading threshold is lower than before, but still comparatively high.”
“Old habits die hard, too many unnecessary details. Why use two hundred words to describe the protagonist’s sword? Clearly, there’s no sword in the subsequent scenes.”
“No, this paragraph has to be deleted.” Jima took her pen and randomly drew a few red circles on the manuscript paper.
“Too verbose; they say to get straight to the point, but this kid goes around and around for ages, even describing the little flowers by the roadside.” Jima crossed out a few more sentences.
“I’m really at my wits’ end; the narration has taken nearly a thousand words to make its point.”
With a flourish, Jima drew a few more red circles on the paper.
Upon reaching the twenty-first page, Jima compared it to the outline and shook her head:
“Wow, this guy is really dragging it out. The outline has these lines: ‘Jojo is taken in a cart by a kind elf princess. He discovers the magical power of sweet potatoes, and just then, a group of green-skinned orcs attack, bringing chaos and death. Jojo, energized by the sweet potatoes, unleashes a big fireball to drive them back.’ He’s written over twenty pages without even pulling out a sweet potato.”
“… No, it’s not just dragging; this guy has no sense of importance. The description of the sweet potato has fewer words than a flower on the roadside!”
With a flurry, she drew several more red circles; on that large sheet of paper, only a few segments of text escaped the fate of being circled.
“No sense of importance; even a simple ‘hero saves beauty’ scene is written so poorly.” Jima mumbled to herself as she reviewed her work from start to finish again.
The manuscript in her hands totaled thirty pages, about five hundred words per page, which meant she had turned in fifteen thousand words over just a few days—showing that the treatment she had given him far exceeded his expectations, thereby igniting Owen Greene’s enthusiasm.
However, after Jima’s extensive cuts, the remaining content was less than six pages, akin to a person being left with just a neck and a head; describing it as being cut to pieces would not be an exaggeration.
As the saying goes, life isn’t easy, and cats bear the brunt. Jima wasn’t simply venting her suffering; she was tough on him. This book was important to her; the more people she could deceive into reading it, the more suffering she could propagate.
So after drawing a large number of red circles, Jima wrote modification opinions and guidance in each circle. As she continued to write, she suddenly remembered that she was the one paying for the work, and thus changed her guidance into modification commands.
“Modification command: The little flower isn’t important; just gloss over it.”
“Modification command: The depiction of the elf princess is too brief; also, even though the protagonist is in disheveled clothing, don’t describe her looking at him with disdain! She’s supposed to leave a good impression on the readers so they’ll expect the protagonist to take her.”
“Modification command: Stop writing about the wheels and the life insights related to them! Describe the elf princess’s charming actions and words instead, or hint at how awesome the sweet potatoes are.”
After finishing such modification commands, Jima rubbed her aching fingers; the paper now bore a slew of crooked, haphazard modification orders that looked like evil spells recorded by a sorcerer—just looking at them caused eye strain.
Jima pondered, “Not everyone has a thirst for knowledge like I do, and will carefully read my modification orders.”
Having said that, Jima took another piece of paper and wrote “Modification Summary” in large letters.
The first line read: “Just a reminder, the contract stipulates that only the revised word count counts as payment.”
Jima believed that with this reminder, even if Owen Greene was a literary pretender, he would recognize his identity as a worker.
“Your main problem is a lack of sense of importance. Write details for important parts, and gloss over the unimportant ones.”
“Sweet potatoes are very important; they are the main means for the protagonist to become stronger, yet you have allocated fewer ‘words’ to them than to a flower by the roadside.”
“The elf princess is also very important. Write extensively about her beauty and indirectly showcase her noble status, in short, write a lot of things that would make the protagonist like her…”
“If you had carefully read the modification opinions, you should know that the next step is to elaborate on the orc ambush and the heavy casualties of the elf guard, followed by writing how the protagonist turns the tide. A little tip: you can write more about the reactions of the supporting characters at this point.”
“Besides that, minimize the appearances of useless supporting characters. You’ve described eighteen supporting characters in just thirty pages.”
After writing this, Jima stuffed the pile of papers into an envelope and snorted, “No wonder he’s been writing for twenty years without making any significant progress.”
The next morning, as dawn broke.
In a guesthouse next to the XueLe Publishing House, Owen Greene lay in bed, deep in a beautiful dream at his new home.
In his dream, the extraordinary Ms. Jima, radiating charm, approached him with a manuscript in hand, expressing her joy, praising him, and inviting him to participate in her salon book club, which had only two attendees.
The two of them grew increasingly close, their relationship blossoming, with Ms. Jima helping him sort through the original manuscript, which was well-received by the academic world after publication. Additionally, Ms. Jima became enamored with him, writing poetry to hint at a marriage proposal.
“Knock, knock, knock.”
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door.
Owen Greene awoke from his beautiful dream, got out of bed, and instinctively said, “I will pay the rent.”
“Mr. Owen, it’s me, I’m Ms. Jima’s servant.”
After leaving his warm bed, a wave of cold air made Owen Greene shiver, and he suddenly woke up, realizing that he was no longer worried about rent and didn’t have to face the landlord’s plump face every day.
“Wait a moment,” Owen Greene draped on his coat, looked out the window, and noticed that it was just getting light. The servant coming to find him so early must mean there was an urgent matter.
What could it be? It must be because my writing is so good; after all, Ms. Jima’s friends have low standards, and they must be amazed upon seeing my work.
Owen Greene hurriedly shoved his feet into his leather shoes, using them as slippers, and called out, “Coming!”
He opened the door to find Ms. Jima’s maid, dressed in thick winter attire, holding a thick envelope and saying, “Good morning, Ms. Jima specifically ordered me to deliver this to you as soon as possible.”
Owen Greene’s heart raced; it felt like his beautiful dream was turning into reality. This was no illusion! He had just dreamed of this scene, where Ms. Jima’s maid came to deliver him a letter full of praise, and now the second time it was Ms. Jima herself coming.
Owen Greene took the envelope. “Good morning, thank you.”
As the door closed, he hurried to his desk with such speed that his coat fell to the floor, but he didn’t care, pulling out a newly purchased letter opener and tearing open the envelope, reaching in to extract the contents.
What he pulled out, however, were pages marked with red circles, with Jima filling the blank spaces with words resembling a malicious curse, all crooked and scrawled.
Owen Greene focused his gaze and felt his blood pressure rise immediately. “Modification orders?! What does she know? How can she so recklessly edit it like this?!”
Looking at his hard work, which seemed to be chopped into pieces, Owen Greene barely lasted through reading one page before he couldn’t hold it in any longer, crumpled the paper into a ball, and threw it forcefully against the wall.
“How dare she criticize my writing when she herself has nothing but trashy prose!?” Owen Greene fumed, “Her writing is crude and easy to understand, even blander than plain water, with an utterly nonsensical plot!”
“I helped her enrich the content of the book, and she doesn’t recognize the good stuff, yet still claims I don’t understand weighty matters?! She doesn’t get it, but she dares to strike out my words?”
Owen Greene felt certain that Ms. Jima’s friend must have extremely poor reading skills and vulgar taste.
“Clearly, there were so many foreshadowings and clues at the start! If she couldn’t see my profound intention, how dare she say my writing is bad?”
“She can’t even write well; her writing looks like wriggling maggots. Ms. Jima’s friend must be half-illiterate. It’s so strange; Ms. Jima has such high literary standards, yet she has such a friend; she must be quite uncomfortable.”
After cursing a few more times, Owen Greene’s mood finally calmed down. He grabbed a piece of paper and wrote in an elegant, flowing script:
“To Ms. Jima’s friend.”
“My writing has no issues; not a single word needs changing.”
“Additionally, I am not your servant; not even the emperor can command me. People born with noble status like you are not lacking in history, but I, Owen Greene, am unique and destined to leave my mark in history.”
“A century from now, people will read my work and remember my name, while you will be forgotten.”
After finishing, Owen Greene felt a wave of pleasure. He set down his quill, took an envelope, carefully placed the letter inside, and sealed it—it represented his dignity as a writer.
At that moment, among the pile of manuscript papers, a piece of white stationery caught his attention. He opened it to find it filled with crooked universal writing, the first line reading: “.”
“Just a reminder, the contract stipulates that only the revised word count counts as payment.”
Owen Greene inhaled sharply, feeling a chill this winter; he bent down to pick up his coat and draped it over his shivering body.
After barely finishing reading this warning, he tore it into pieces and tossed them into the trash can. He sat down, shivering uncontrollably, reminiscing about the time last year when he had no manuscript fees and was driven out by his landlord, wandering the streets.
If it weren’t for swallowing his pride and knocking on the doors of former classmates, he would still be facing the bitter cold of winter.
He sighed, “Literature is dead.”
Then he sorted through the heavily circled original manuscript, painfully looking at the modification opinions, and made revisions.
The more he wrote, the more unhappy he became.
How could there be a magical sweet potato that would allow an ordinary person to defeat orcs?
And he had to write about a noble elf princess, enamored with the protagonist?
Why? Just because the protagonist had sweet potatoes?
Moreover, he could go home and grab sweet potatoes, and even worse, his warehouse was packed with unsellable sweet potatoes.
The more he wrote, the more difficult it became, the more he found the protagonist unsatisfactory, his heart filled with discomfort and distress; he felt like a virtuous woman being pressured by society to flirt with a group of bloated, overbearing men.
But he had no choice but to grit his teeth and continue writing, forcing himself to brainstorm specific plots.
