(the things I would normally leave until the end) and
working my way up to the Herculean task of the fire scene. Starting at the end
works for solving mazes. Why wouldn’t it work on difficult editors’ revisions?
If nothing else, it will give me a feeling of accomplishment, like I’m actually
getting something done, instead of spinning my wheels on one
seemingly-impossible assignment. And then everything will be done but the fire
scene, and I’ll be able to fully focus on it. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even
stumble across some inspiration along the way, and I’ll be eager to do the
re-write.
Probably not, but I have to take my optimism
where I can get it, at this point.
Without further ado, I start on page one and
methodically make the changes Lucas has suggested, nay demanded, bookmarking
and skipping over anything that gives me pause or seems complicated and
time-consuming. My goal today is to get stuff done, not sit and agonize and
contemplate. If I notice that familiar feeling of dread slipping in, I move on
to the next comment.
In no time at all, I’ve reached the end of the
manuscript, and I can’t stop myself from grinning and saying out loud, “That’s
what I’m talking about!” even though it makes me feel like a goober. I’m a
happy goober, and that’s all that matters right now.
Quickly, before taking a break, I count how
many of Lucas’s requested changes I skipped (all instances of bland descriptive
prose—another one of my weaknesses) and note with glee that there are far fewer
than it seemed there were when I was going through the copy the first time. I’m
on a roll and don’t want to lose momentum, but I also recognize that I’ll run
out of gas if I don’t refuel with some food and water. I decide I’ll choose one
scene—Rose’s visit to her family’s burial plot upon returning to her hometown
after college graduation—and think about it during lunch. Notepad and pen in
hand and a definite pep in my step, I cross the sunny yard of thick, velvety
grass that only money can grow.
******
It’s not a fun thing to remember, but over my
tuna salad sandwich (the best one I’ve ever eaten, thanks to Paulette), I force
myself to go sense-by-sense through the experience of seeing my family’s
gravesite for the first time. I ordered the headstones in the haze that was the
week following the fire, but I was hundreds of miles away—probably sitting in a
lecture hall, listening to a professor drone on about a subject that I didn’t
care about but was forced to take to fulfill a general education requirement—when
they were placed. I could have taken a trip on any given weekend to visit the
cemetery, but… somehow it was never a priority. It definitely wasn’t something
high on the list of things I wanted to do. Until I was finished with college,
that is. Then, I felt an almost physical need to go there.
It was technically late spring still. But in
Indiana, that meant it was already blazing hot. The scorched grass crunched
under my shoes as I picked my way to the plot where the people I’d been closest
to in the world lay buried in their caskets.
Caskets. An interesting choice I made,
considering they were already partially-cremated in the fire. I don’t even
remember making that decision. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe that was one of the few
things my mom’s sister, Chelsea, did before she went back to her life in
California and never spoke to me again. Or maybe that was one of the things
stipulated in their wills… they didn’t want to be cremated. It’s not something
we ever sat around the dinner table and talked about. It doesn’t matter, I
guess, because the result was that their charred bodies were put in coffins and
tossed into some holes in a depressing cemetery in central Indiana. Done. No
going back.
No going back. That’s what I kept telling
myself while I walked closer and closer to where I knew their graves were.
That, I remembered. Way in the back, almost against the chain
working my way up to the Herculean task of the fire scene. Starting at the end
works for solving mazes. Why wouldn’t it work on difficult editors’ revisions?
If nothing else, it will give me a feeling of accomplishment, like I’m actually
getting something done, instead of spinning my wheels on one
seemingly-impossible assignment. And then everything will be done but the fire
scene, and I’ll be able to fully focus on it. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even
stumble across some inspiration along the way, and I’ll be eager to do the
re-write.
Probably not, but I have to take my optimism
where I can get it, at this point.
Without further ado, I start on page one and
methodically make the changes Lucas has suggested, nay demanded, bookmarking
and skipping over anything that gives me pause or seems complicated and
time-consuming. My goal today is to get stuff done, not sit and agonize and
contemplate. If I notice that familiar feeling of dread slipping in, I move on
to the next comment.
In no time at all, I’ve reached the end of the
manuscript, and I can’t stop myself from grinning and saying out loud, “That’s
what I’m talking about!” even though it makes me feel like a goober. I’m a
happy goober, and that’s all that matters right now.
Quickly, before taking a break, I count how
many of Lucas’s requested changes I skipped (all instances of bland descriptive
prose—another one of my weaknesses) and note with glee that there are far fewer
than it seemed there were when I was going through the copy the first time. I’m
on a roll and don’t want to lose momentum, but I also recognize that I’ll run
out of gas if I don’t refuel with some food and water. I decide I’ll choose one
scene—Rose’s visit to her family’s burial plot upon returning to her hometown
after college graduation—and think about it during lunch. Notepad and pen in
hand and a definite pep in my step, I cross the sunny yard of thick, velvety
grass that only money can grow.
******
It’s not a fun thing to remember, but over my
tuna salad sandwich (the best one I’ve ever eaten, thanks to Paulette), I force
myself to go sense-by-sense through the experience of seeing my family’s
gravesite for the first time. I ordered the headstones in the haze that was the
week following the fire, but I was hundreds of miles away—probably sitting in a
lecture hall, listening to a professor drone on about a subject that I didn’t
care about but was forced to take to fulfill a general education requirement—when
they were placed. I could have taken a trip on any given weekend to visit the
cemetery, but… somehow it was never a priority. It definitely wasn’t something
high on the list of things I wanted to do. Until I was finished with college,
that is. Then, I felt an almost physical need to go there.
It was technically late spring still. But in
Indiana, that meant it was already blazing hot. The scorched grass crunched
under my shoes as I picked my way to the plot where the people I’d been closest
to in the world lay buried in their caskets.
Caskets. An interesting choice I made,
considering they were already partially-cremated in the fire. I don’t even
remember making that decision. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe that was one of the few
things my mom’s sister, Chelsea, did before she went back to her life in
California and never spoke to me again. Or maybe that was one of the things
stipulated in their wills… they didn’t want to be cremated. It’s not something
we ever sat around the dinner table and talked about. It doesn’t matter, I
guess, because the result was that their charred bodies were put in coffins and
tossed into some holes in a depressing cemetery in central Indiana. Done. No
going back.
No going back. That’s what I kept telling
myself while I walked closer and closer to where I knew their graves were.
That, I remembered. Way in the back, almost against the chain
Similar Books
