Paul Laudiero - Sh*t Rough Drafts: Pop Cultures Favorite Books, Movies, and TV Shows as They Might Have Been

COPYRIGHT 2014 BY PAUL LAUDIERO. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form without written permission
from the publisher. ISBN 978-1-4521-3724-7 (epub)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Laudiero, Paul.
Sh*t rough drafts : pop cultures favorite books, movies, and TV shows as they might have been / Paul Laudiero.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-4521-3130-6 (pbk.)
1. Popular cultureHumor. 2.

AuthorshipHumor. I. Title. II. Title: Shit rough drafts. PN6231.P635L38 2014
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But did I let the haters get me down? No. Instead I set out in a stolen 2002 Toyota Prius to track down as many drafts as I could. It wasnt easy. Writers are reclusive, secretive creatures, and I was forced to break into homes, museums, libraries, safes, studies, and even crypts (Im talking about you, Christopher Nolan). Ive been arrested hundreds of times, lost an ear (booby traps: thanks a lot, Kafka!), and am currently on the run from the Hemingway estate. K. K.

Rowlings assassins. Michael Crichton? He has an actual velociraptor guarding his manuscripts. I suffered for these drafts. Was it worth it? No. Absolutely not. Im missing three fingers and havent slept in a warm bed for months.

But once youve done the things Ive had to do, you dont turn back. I had to show the world that these writers are but mortals like you and me. They toiled and suffered over each line and it wasnt until the pages were bleeding with red ink that they could grow. Before each New York Times bestseller climbed the ranks or Academy Award winning film won the Oscar, it was a sh*t rough draft. So as you turn these pages, dont think about me, on a life raft in the middle of the Pacific, paddling against the trade winds back to my publisher in San Francisco with nothing to eat but a tattered copy of Robinson Crusoe. Ill be fine.

This is the life I chose. Think about these drafts, these terrible drafts, and the suffering the authors endured to get to the great finished works we know and love. The secret? They just worked hard. They spent hours each day slaving at a desk, in a coffee shop, a bar, or a windowless closet free from distraction, laboring toward perfection. The first draft of anything is sh*t, Hemingway once said. SENSE AND SENSIBILITY by Jane Austen ( 1811 ) PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen ( 1813 ) MACBETH by William Shakespeare ( 1606 ) THE DIVINE COMEDY: THE INFERNO by Dante Alighieri ( 1308 ) THE BIBLE: EXODUSTHE BIBLE: GENESISPARADISE LOST by John Milton ( 1667 ) THE RAVEN by Edgar Allan Poe ( 1845 ) THE TIME MACHINE by H. G. G.

Wells ( 1895 ) WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy ( 1869) ANNA KARENINA by Leo Tolstoy ( 1878 ) DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE by Robert Louis Stevenson ( 1886 ) DRACULA by Bram Stoker ( 1897 ) FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley ( 1818 ) UNCLE TOMS CABIN by Harriet Beecher Stowe ( 1852 ) MOBY DICK by Herman Melville ( 1851 ) THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck ( 1939 ) THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER by Mark Twain ( 1876 ) THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain ( 1884 ) A TALE OF TWO CITIES by Charles Dickens ( 1859 ) GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Charles Dickens ( 1860 ) GULLIVERS TRAVELS