Revising this last novel was a lot like how I met my future wife way back in 10th grade.
I had taken a perfectly nice girl to the homecoming dance--a girl with the same first name as she who would become my wife, though she spelled it with a “z” instead of an “s”--but something happened once I was there. I had been harboring some doubts about our relationship for some time prior to this: I remember walking her home from school most every day, holding hands, doing That Which Couples Do, and so forth. But I also remember feeling no particular spark of emotion, no sense of “being in love.” As I put it to myself then, “Is this what the poets write about when they write about love? Because I don’t feel that at all.” So I suppose I was already primed for what was to come next.
At the homecoming dance, I saw her. My future wife. She was literally across the dance floor, a la Tony and Maria, and I could neither see nor even notice anything else. I walked over to her (leaving my date behind in a move I still to this day consider very shameful) and performed a wholly cheesy magic act in which I “disappeared” a cloth napkin (stuffing it into my closed fist while it very obviously simply trailed out the bottom). I knew she was the one for me, and I knew how to get her. At the risk of misquoting Jane Austen--Dear Reader, I married her!
Revising this novel was a lot like that. I knew something was not quite right: the novel I had written didn’t “wow” me like it should. It had holes, both in the plot and in the emotion, and it just wasn’t as fun as it could have been. It took me a short time, but once I saw the solution, it hit me like a thunderbolt. Clear, obvious, and quite definitely the best move I could make. Revising everything in light of that was not terribly hard, especially since I was deleting whole chunks of writing without looking back. Yeah, I’d put work into those sections, but they were not as good as the new stuff--not by a long shot. So deleting those sections was not particularly painful.
I realize that apologizing to the girl I abandoned in 10th grade could be considered hubristic--I am sure she found someone better for her than I would have been, and I’m sure my callous act of abandonment didn’t scar her for life. Still, I wish I’d been somewhat more noble than I was. My only excuse would be I was (and so remain) completely star-struck by my love that I did not even think of anyone or anything else.
Anyway, the next step is the publishing process. I’ll fill you in on how that goes as it...goes.
Be seeing you!
I had taken a perfectly nice girl to the homecoming dance--a girl with the same first name as she who would become my wife, though she spelled it with a “z” instead of an “s”--but something happened once I was there. I had been harboring some doubts about our relationship for some time prior to this: I remember walking her home from school most every day, holding hands, doing That Which Couples Do, and so forth. But I also remember feeling no particular spark of emotion, no sense of “being in love.” As I put it to myself then, “Is this what the poets write about when they write about love? Because I don’t feel that at all.” So I suppose I was already primed for what was to come next.
At the homecoming dance, I saw her. My future wife. She was literally across the dance floor, a la Tony and Maria, and I could neither see nor even notice anything else. I walked over to her (leaving my date behind in a move I still to this day consider very shameful) and performed a wholly cheesy magic act in which I “disappeared” a cloth napkin (stuffing it into my closed fist while it very obviously simply trailed out the bottom). I knew she was the one for me, and I knew how to get her. At the risk of misquoting Jane Austen--Dear Reader, I married her!
Revising this novel was a lot like that. I knew something was not quite right: the novel I had written didn’t “wow” me like it should. It had holes, both in the plot and in the emotion, and it just wasn’t as fun as it could have been. It took me a short time, but once I saw the solution, it hit me like a thunderbolt. Clear, obvious, and quite definitely the best move I could make. Revising everything in light of that was not terribly hard, especially since I was deleting whole chunks of writing without looking back. Yeah, I’d put work into those sections, but they were not as good as the new stuff--not by a long shot. So deleting those sections was not particularly painful.
I realize that apologizing to the girl I abandoned in 10th grade could be considered hubristic--I am sure she found someone better for her than I would have been, and I’m sure my callous act of abandonment didn’t scar her for life. Still, I wish I’d been somewhat more noble than I was. My only excuse would be I was (and so remain) completely star-struck by my love that I did not even think of anyone or anything else.
Anyway, the next step is the publishing process. I’ll fill you in on how that goes as it...goes.
Be seeing you!
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