The Hardcore Diaries by Mick Foley Page B

flew like a flash, tore open the shutter and threw up the…Wait a minute, I think I just spoke through the window screen.
    “What is it, honey?”
    “Mom says you have to help unload the groceries.”
    “Tell Mom I’m working.”
    A few minutes later, I heard her come again. “Dad, Dad.”
    “Yes, Noelle.”
    “Mom says she needs your help with the groceries.”
    “Did you tell her I was working, honey?”
    “She says she doesn’t care.”
    With that, I stormed down the stairs and charged the house, ready to fight for my artistic rights.
    “Colette, I told you I had to work all day.”
    “Yeah, I know,” she said. “You can go back to work after you unload the car.”
    “But this is my job. I’m a writer.”
    “Yeah, sure, Mick.”
    “I’m not joking,” I pleaded, sounding like Donald Sutherland’s feeble professor in Animal House, the one who finally confesses that his novel in progress is a “piece of shit.”
    Colette just looked at me, and despite one last protest of “I’ve written four best sellers,” I headed for the car, realizing that convincing my wife, let alone the literary world, that I was really a writer was going to be more of a challenge than I thought.
     

    “Darling.”
    “Yes, Vicky.”
    “You cannot rewrite a book in five days.”
    I was terrified. I should have just said, “Yes, ma’am,” but I had put about seventy hours of work into those five days, and I thought my rewriting was pretty good. So I asked what I felt was obvious. “Why not?”
    “Because I’ve been doing this for thirty years, and I know it’s not possible.”
    “But have you read it?”
    Victoria let out a frustrated sigh. “Listen, Mick, I have a fifteen-hundred-page manuscript and a thousand-page manuscript to edit. When I am through with those, I will read your changes. I don’t know how long it will take.”
    Man, I loved writing that novel, but I missed the breakneck creative pace of WWE, where I’d get an idea while barreling down the freeway at 3:00 A.M ., and it would come to life in front of millions the very next evening. I think Tom Petty was right. The waiting really is the hardest part.
    It was about two weeks later when I got the fateful call.
    “Darling, how are you?”
    My heart was pounding. “Well, that depends on you, Vicky.”
    “Well, there are a few problems.”
    “Are they big problems?” I asked.
    “One of them is,” she said.
    “Okay, let me have it.”
    So, she let me have it. But it really wasn’t that bad. She was proposing a big change, but one that basically involved deleting some religious passages. No real rewriting. Vicky felt that my past as a wrestler was going to make me an easy target for critics, and she didn’t want unnecessary religious controversy to overshadow the characters and the story. The other change was fairly minor.
    “Is that it?” I asked, almost unable to believe my luck. “So, we’re ready to print it?”
    “I must admit,” Vicky said slowly, “I am impressed not only with the work you did but the speed in which you did it.”
    I was shocked. “Is that a compliment?”
    “It’s as close as you’re going to get from me,” she responded. Despite the fact that she was a stern taskmaster, I have often been told how highly she thinks of me, and despite the fact that I’m still terrified of her intellect, I like her very much as well.
    “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll keep this a secret between you and I.”
    “That’s you and me. ”
    “Damn.”
     

    But first, here’s another exclusive. The next part—where I name the wrestler—actually took place many months before the previous part, where I rewrite the book in five days. If this was a Knopf book, Victoria Wilson would unleash her powers of intimidation on me, forcing me to go back to the spare room over the garage to toil for hours, making late-night changes in the discomfort of that stupid orange Worcester chair. I’m hoping Margaret Clark, my editor at