Currently Editing

Heading into the weekend, I am still busily editing the What-I-Took-Away approach to my business management project There’s a Moose in the Guard Shack—he’s gonna kill me! This process is not the easiest. I already know what’s on the page and reading through the verbiage is difficult as my mind is probably five or so words ahead of my eyes. It’s not that my mind is that quick. It’s just a fact that it already knows what is coming.

This state of recognition plays a old dirty trick on me by suggesting that my mind knows a better way to say what I have already spent numerous hours trying to get it down as best I can and currently believe that I have it close to perfect. Still, I go about changing the sentence I am working on. Then there it comes. Right in the very next sentence sits exactly the fact, the statement, the sentiment, whatever… that I just changed the preceding sentence to include. Why is this? Is it my mind that plays this trick or maybe the Literary Giants of yesteryear? Would Twain, Faulkner, Thompson, or Fitzgerald go out of their way to pick on me. I could understand it if it was one of the Marx brothers. I’m for sure that I am not in their league. So, for what possible need would they see fit to pick on me?

 

 Mark Twain

 

 William Faulkner

 

 Hunter S. Thompson

 

 F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

 No, not those Marx!

 Karl Marx

Maybe it isn’t the Giants picking on me. Maybe the task of editing is meant to be hard. Getting the rough draft into memory isn’t near the problem that editing seems to be. Well, maybe changing the original direction to the What-I-Took-Away concept has proven to be much more difficult than I originally thought it would. I have now been at this for some time and still have more than several chapters left to work. It does seem to get a bit easier as I move from one to the next. The task goes on.

I have put behind me: Tommy’s encounter with the moose, CPT Love’s camping encounter with artillery shells landing all about him, the Florida 500 lb bomb, more mess hall trucks than one ever wants to imagine, hunting snowshoe hares and my relationship with the Cosmos.

Still ahead is the Pillsbury Doughboy, spare tires, Jack’s House, terrifying plane rides and the great ping-pong ball drop.

I can hardly wait to get started again.