Manhattan 3 P.M.

We follow a young writer who is learning craft and wisdom of good fiction writing.

All week he agonizes over his manuscript in order to make the final Friday afternoon pickup at  the mailbox near his apartment. Every Monday morning he receives the manuscript back in the mail, marked up in pencil. The comments are to-the-point and can sometimes hurt, but always have the smack of writerly wisdom.

They grow testier over time, especially about a certain word he always misspells. ”sp STILL”. Other criticisms that recur are: “too many words” and “true?”

It becomes a struggle of the spirit. Why do I put myself through this? I know this is good. What’ll that bastard find to bitch about now?” But our guy follows the advice. His short story gets better and better.

He starts to apply the advice in his relationships. He’s hitting on a woman, having a hard phone conversation with his brother—and we hear the margin notes as voiceover. “Word choice! Too many words! Is this true?” His internal editor goads him into making sure he has said what he means. Saying what he means forces him to search himself—what do I mean? And forces him to ask “Do I want to mean that?” It’s a slow, painful effort of self-revision.

He looks up a former boss he once told off, the reason he was fired and now has an even worse job. He tells the former boss what he should have said at the time. “You weren’t an asshole, Gordon. The problem was me. I was embarrassed, plain and simple. And I took it out on you.” The boss replies, “Well, Owen, that was big of you to say.” “But you were a dick,” our guy adds.

He mends fences with his brother.

He gets back his old girlfriend. “Go and ahead say you told me so,” he concludes. “Because you did tell me so.” “I’ll save it for next time,” she says, embracing him.

He makes decisions about drinking. About his part-time job. About the way he tries to look intellectual for the woman at the cofree shop.

Amid all this we are always coming back to him in his junky apartment, typing and swiping into his iPad. We see the sentences forming and re-forming in a way as cool as the visualized thought in “An Extraordinary Mind,” but unique, an effect that is fresh and perfect for this story. We see him and his characters in a kind of phantom world: the writer scrutinizing a moment over and over, from various angles, hunting for the essential reality. “Why does Lennie character feel so anxious right now? No, not anxious: impatient? But why? 

“Show, don’t tell,” says the voice of his editor.

He finds the reality. There it is! A drip from above keeps hitting the Lennie character on the neck! And he has to stand there, letting it.

And then deeper into the scene. “He roared at her.” Did he roar?”

“Is it true?”

“No, he didn’t roar. Lennie’s not a roarer. So what did he say. Jesus, he didn’t say anything. His mouth opened, and he didn’t say anything. This instant of all instants. And the moment passed. He hesitated. That’s the truth, here.”

It’s a six week odyssey of small edits. Not quite “Groundhog Day,” but reminiscent of that. We see the manuscript feed from the printer one last time, now with its new title. “He Didn’t Say.” He carries a letter one last time to the mailbox. But, for the first time, he’s missed the 3 PM pickup. By a mere two minutes. Because he took time to shave first! Because he stopped to help the neighbor lady into a car! A dozen things he could blame it on! But he stills himself inside. The way he has learned to still a distracted mind when he sits down to write.

He walks the eight blocks to the vast central New York City Post Office Building. Stands in line. Asks if there’s any way to get his letter posted before the weekend. Explains about the mailbox he normally uses. The mail clerk is curious, asks for details, writes down the address. Looks something up.

“We’ll take care of that,” he says. 

“What do you mean? Take care of what?.”

“That’s box a de-com. Fell off da books. Shoulda been tooken out twenty thirty years ago.”

“You mean—“

“Removed! Nuther one shows up now then. Fulla mail never went no where.”

“When will you remove it?”

“Dat ol dead box be gone by Monday mawning. United States Post Office don’t sit around about de-coms.”

“You mean after the first twenty or thirty years?”

“You gonna post dat or what?”

Our guy is dazed. “No, not right now.”

“In a hurry then no hurry. Ain’t none off me. Next!”

Our guy goes back outside. Sits on the grand Post Office staircase looking at the city. We see the front of the envelope for the first time. It’s addressed, of course, to Ernest Hemingway. To one of his long-ago addresses in Paris.

“Well, anyway, I did it, Papa. I wrote something true. I think you’d agree. No, I know you’d agree.”

He puts the letter into the vest pocket of his sport jacket. “They’ll never de-com you, sir.”