Oh, no.
I’ve got so many words to spill it’s as though they’ve bottle-necked in my throat. And something’s coming. I can almost taste it.
Up until Sunday night, I’d been relatively quiet for days. When I say this, it will seem like a lot, considering I just said “quiet” – but truly, in the grand scheme of encounters a typical person might have in a week's time, I repeat, I’ve been quiet.
I’ve spoken to Rw, my children, my parents, my sisters and my beloved Alexis. No one else. Not even Habib at the Quick Stop, who normally asks after everything from my miles-per-gallon to my take on the Obama administration. “Do you like him, Democrat?” I wouldn’t engage, backing out the door with a tight-lipped grin.
I’ve dodged the chatty mothers at my son’s school, certain I’ll say something to the effect of “I could give a shit if your washer is broken and no, I don’t drive to damn Oklahoma for bargain flip-flops, bless you and the time on your hands! Yeah, stop looking at my eyebrows, I haven’t had time and P.S – You’re too old for fucking skinny jeans and why the hell are you wearing a bedazzled trucker hat at 9:00am… or, ever?” I won’t mean a bit of it ugly, truly. I’d likely even say it sweetly. But, well… then.
See, I’ve been quiet because I have something to say, to spew, to preach but it’s of the untellable nature. It cannot pass my lips. I cannot give wind to the words because who knows whose ears they might fall upon?
Plus, I don’t know what it is.
Then that thing I keep tasting, it’s got me frantically clicking Send and Receive in the toolbar of my email. Refreshing my phone. Checking my post box. But here’s the thing: I don’t know what it is I’m expecting to arrive at any of these various points of contact, or what exactly, specifically, pin-pointed and directly – it is that I need to say. So to a degree, I fear it. Does bad news cometh? Or am I simply waiting for the right person to ask the right question?
Or maybe it’s just the writer’s version of Spring Fever and I need to simply pick up the pen… and bloom.
It was confirmed last night that it is indeed the remaining edits and revisions to my book that still loom large, that I’ve been putting off by any way possible. Plastering walls, digging and planting vegetable beds big enough to feed a third world country, making “special boxes,” blogging (um, hi,) baking brick-hard cakes, organizing my goozillion photos… Creating elsewhere so as to avoid getting down to business. Because I hate revising. It’s painful. Like waxing the most tender of spots. Tugging one thread in Chapter 3 that might unravel a page (or more!) in Chapter 44. I’m certain in moments gray matter has leaked from my ears.
Then it’s the legion-sized group of folks that have walked with me, eyes on every word, thoughts throughout my pages, feedback, support and swift kicks in the ass who remind me that they’re all waiting. They have expectations. If it’s one thing I’m good at – it’s meeting expectations, if even only in the oddest (and tardiest) of ways.
And then I do this, spew it out – and I’m silly. It’s silly. These are such great problems to have, but it would be most Un-Jenny to do it without a bit of the vapors. Where’s my velvet settee to swoon upon, back of hand across forehead?
So yeah. I’m working on POV and making it ten times the bitch it really is. I sit with it and it’s just not so hard. Only involved to the degree of sitting slack-jawed and brow pinched in the glow of my screen for hours on end readjusting those threads. Puppet mastering. Dancing with my characters. All along it’s been them, the characters, nagging at me, waiting for my attention. A dear friend and incredible author, Suzanne Frank, said it best – it’s surgical. And it is.
In other news here are some words for you to chew on, adopt into your vocabulary and use: cede, nascent, engender, papist, catapult, ire, legion, cat-nipped, recalcitrance, beetle, snatch, acrimony, salted, caustic, flam-diggory, rancorous, persnickety, consonant, puckered and filmy. Talk amongst yourselves. I’ve got work to do. Expect it.
