My Saucy Boss
Rolling right along with the final edit shoving off from the shores of the first page in February and since have sailed across some seventy thousand words to this the last day of May. A mere fifteen pages are all that remain of the voyage. I have been racked with nasty bouts of ego induced fear. I have brooded over the loss of rhythm, been in fool death swoon over an editors rejection of a term I had fallen so in love with. Whole paragraphs had to be disassembled and then reassembled again and again until fit for literary consumption. He-he-he’s had to be excised. She-she-she’s terminated. Indefinite words hunted down and killed. I have had to get off my desk chair go to the mirror look at myself and admit that an entire scene had been a failure, that there was no revising that could make what was never there to begin with suddenly magically appear. But, we now are near this other side of this journey. I haven’t the slightest idea of whether this story will fly, couldn’t know and wish I did. I know I love my wife. That is sure. My earliest version was read by a trusted inner circle. On the basis of a wide range of reactions I plunged into what I hoped and what all writers hope will be the final edit. My editor lashing me daily with columns bulging with corrections and suggestions, a thousand miseries rolled up into one exquisite exclamation point aimed directly at my shattered confidence. Then, when they’ve got you right where they want you, when all hope is lost, there comes a point in the process where you are so deluded as to dare say… not bad.
Fragment from the Novel
Jo heard voices but was overtaken, the intensity shoved her closer to her rawest self, the pain unspeakable. She gripped hold of Buzz and Jessica’s hands, every sinew of muscle in her arms, every vein in her neck strained, as her body’s biochemistry ripened her thoroughfare, the gateway to life, the moment of incarnation was by and by nearing as the much anticipated new soul’s head began crowning, closing in upon the first breath.
“That’s right, you are a magnificent woman, good work mama baby-maker,” the doula’s soothing voice laced with confidence. “Come on, another breath, the air is free, take it, that’s right, it’s a good day for your love to come on out and meet everyone.”
