A while back, my wife and I watched the poignant and highly recommended movie The Words. Here’s the synopsis from the website BendSource: 

When shallow wannabe-writer Rory (Bradley Cooper) finds an old manuscript tucked away in a bag, he decides to pass the work off as his own. The book, called “The Window Tears,” brings Rory great acclaim until the real author (Jeremy Irons) shows up and threatens to destroy Rory’s reputation. Cut to Clayton Hammond (Dennis Quaid), a writer whose popular novel “The Words” seems to mirror Rory’s story, leading to speculation that the tome is Hammond’s thinly veiled autobiography.

Believe it or not, The Words jarred a memory from my childhood. You see, like Rory, I too came across an unpublished manuscript. It all happened when I was in junior high in the mid-1980s. One Friday afternoon, my Mom, who worked as a Relator, picked me up after school and said she needed to stop at one of her listings. She had to do a quick inspection for an open house being held that weekend.

Tucked far from the road, there was nothing remarkable about the house itself. As we walked inside the two-story colonial, my Mom said the kitchen needed a sweep. As she cleaned, I explored the house. Climbing the stairs, I made my way to each empty bedroom and inspected the bare closets. Finding nothing of interest upstairs, I headed back downstairs and turned into the family room. To my surprise, I saw half a ream of standard 8.5×11 copy paper scattered across the hardwood floor. I picked up a couple of pages and realized it was a manuscript. Someone had typed a novel only to leave it behind.

At the time, I had a few notebooks filled with poetry and short-short stories, and I couldn’t fathom leaving my writing anywhere for a stranger to find. Flabbergasted, I wondered why someone would leave behind what was perhaps a labor of love. Had the author received a rejection (or one too many rejections) and tossed the manuscript aside in disgust? Did they have a newer version or an edited copy and no longer needed the earlier draft?

As my Mom continued sweeping the kitchen, I proceeded to pick up every page and make a neat squared stack. Just as she hollered it was time to leave; a car pulled down the long dirt/gravel driveway. My twelve-year-old mind thought the author had come back to reclaim their manuscript. I wondered if they would thank me for picking it up or chastise me because I had planned on taking it home?

It turned out to just be a young couple hoping for a sneak-peek before the open house. Phew!

Once home, I scattered the manuscript on our family room floor and started the daunting chore of putting all the pages in numerical order. I made a pile for pages numbered under one hundred, a second pile for the one hundreds, a third pile for the two hundreds, and a fourth pile for over three hundred. From there, I worked my way through each stack and got the manuscript in order.

Some pages were missing, and I noticed no handwritten notes or edits on any of the pages. There was also no title page or author name attached anywhere.  After all these years, the only word that stands out in my mind is “Omni,” which appeared in each page’s header.

From the sections I did read (I never did get around to reading the whole manuscript), it seemed to be a campy, sci-fi story. It featured characters with strange names who inhabited a planet near Pluto (before Pluto was demoted).

My next question was, what do I do with this manuscript? I knew (even at age twelve) I wanted to be a writer, but I also knew there was a thing called plagiarism and knew that came with some punishment. Besides, had I retyped it and sent it off to a literary agent as my own, I wouldn’t have been able to sign a contract. That meant my parents would have to get involved. They would know what I’ve done, and that would bring on a whole other form of punishment. 

Not having the author’s name, I had no way of contacting him or her. Eventually, the stack of papers found their way into the trash. In hindsight, I wish I had made an effort to locate the author.

Today, I still wonder who the author was. Did they go on to publish that story or a different version of it? Did their writing career flourish? Are they a best-seller, or did they give up on the dream when they sold their house? This all reminds me of Ernest Hemingway’s first wife losing all his writing in 1922 before becoming an established writer. What if I held onto that campy sci-fi story? Would it have served as a juxtaposition to my writing?

A part of me feels for that writer. What if they had no other copy? In the 1980s, we were still at least a decade away from home computers and floppy discs, let alone thumb drives and the “blessed” cloud. Maybe there was a chance the author had a carbon copy or a handwritten copy? Perhaps a copy of the manuscript made its way to an agent’s desk or an eager editor?
 

This just might be the story the world will never know—or maybe someone out there has already read it.

T.M. Jacobs, a native to the shoreline area of Connecticut, now resides in various locations along the east coast with his wife traveling and working from their RV motorhome. He has written and published 15 books (one of which was featured on C-SPAN), over 450 articles published in various newspapers and magazines, teaches classes on writing and publishing, and is currently the owner of JWC Publishing. He is the founder and former editor for Patriots of the American Revolution magazine and has been a freelance writer since 1988.  

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timjacobsghostwriter/

Website: www.jacobswc.com

Email: [email protected]