Next Life in the Afternoon

I am now in the process of editing the book. The bulk of the writing is done. In fact, I’d say all the primary material is there and what I am doing now is changing some phrasing and making lots of cuts. This is a tough process and has to be goal-driven, with the ultimate question being whether or not a section moves the story forward. After putting the manuscript on a shelf for a while, it is easier to make this distinction but it is still a tough decision to extract a well-written bit of text. It feels like making a decision to lay someone off. It’s not always that an employee has done wrong or done a bad job, but that he or she does not fit into the big picture for the company for some reason.

So I guess I am handing out literary pink slips. It’s a tough job to make these cuts but ultimately an important one. As good and fun as it seemed when I wrote it, when I was having my mental vomit through my ticky-tappy fingertips, some things had to go.

The flight to Chicago was uneventful, which is often a good thing when it comes to air travel. Boring is good, if annoying. The types of things that make air travel exciting and riveting are the types of things best left handled by professionals and not even thought about – things like safety issues or equipment maintenance concerns. Thank goodness the airlines employ people to keep not only terrorists but also things like snakes and panhandlers away from the friendly skies.

Yeah, editing really is an important step.