Edit an Entry

What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?

The reason I’m most scared to edit an entry is that it takes a lot of bravery to be vulnerable with people on this scale. If I sit with a piece, over time I start judging it. I lose courage and back out on publishing. I write very fast and hit “Post.” Then, I don’t own it anymore. I’m not the judge of whether it’s good or not.

Plus, getting into the routine of writing every day means that I don’t dwell over past entries unless I have said something that crosses over from personal to professional (for someone else). My perceptions of their feelings are fair game; their jobs are not. So, I’ll go back and change something if they’ll tell me what I need to alter.

For instance, I had to keep that story tight about Kamala Harris for a month so that by the time I told you my sister had a meeting with her, it had been old news for quite a while.

I think the other reason it’s hard to edit entries is that it would be easier after the fact, but I’ve moved on to a new thing…. because it’s easier than sitting in some of those feelings again.

I don’t ever want to go back and edit anything, because I’m a good editor….. for someone else. I need the same thrashing with a red pen I’d give someone else, but I write too fast and furious to put someone else on a deadline like that.

There is one funny thing from yesterday that I didn’t notice until I reread… “I seem to have two audiences locked up…” and proceeded to only describe one of them.

The other is the people interested in cooking and what goes on in a professional kitchen. It gives me a different writing voice, one I like. It’s more confident than I am, because I’m hearing Anthony Bourdain in my head and not me. I’m definitely borrowing style without trying to imitate him, because all line cooks and chefs sound the same.

I think that I have so many long time readers because people do become invested in my weird little life, one that I adore because I chose it.

I don’t think that I chose wisely a lot of the time over the last 10 years, but I’m hoping the next will be easier having literally edited my life. I’ve been broken in ways I never thought I would be, and I’ve survived. Not always happily, but what didn’t make for a great time did make a good story- good or bad, it’s what happened according to me.

I underestimated how much crying there is in writing, and perhaps this is unique to me in some ways because fiction writers are always crying over someone else’s feelings. When I’m writing, I’m pulling things out of me that I haven’t thought about in years. Not everything is happy.

Not everything is sad, either.

What I can say is that it would be miserable going back and editing everything I’ve said about Supergrover, because editing came at a cost….. but no, it didn’t. That’s because I should have realized a long time ago that she was never going to open up to me and I was wasting a lot of time and energy with hope.

However, there are several good options as to why she’s not talking right now, so I don’t want to be a dick and say we’ll never speak again because I’m sure we won’t. I’ve been sure several times before, and it hasn’t lasted that long. But what I don’t want her, or anyone else, to be able to say is that I was the only one who exhibited toxic behavior. That withholding information was just as bad as giving too much. That we were both hotheaded and angry. That we’re both first children, and not used to being wrong. We’ve got each other’s numbers. For every action, there’s been a reaction. Sometimes it’s mine that’s blown out of proportion. Sometimes it’s hers.

No one won anything here. We both participated, and it became toxic because of a cycle perpetuated by both of us. I want to show that more than anything because I don’t have the want or need to blame her for anything.

Writing is about what I’m going to do. Editing it is dragging up the past. It makes the ghosts rise from their graves, and I’m eager to avoid that part of it. With an editor, they’d be reading my words without having memories attached to them.

So, in order to get me to edit my own work, I’m not exactly sure what it would take. It would be cutting my brain off from my heart…. something that writing stream-of-consciousness never does.