interim

I've finished the cuts--altogether I cut 103 pp., which is not bad. I was surprised how easy it was after I got a rhythm. I found that my dialogue (which I've always thought of as something I do well) to be particularly cuttable--sometimes I took out a whole chunk of a conversation; sometimes I just nipped and pared until it was shaved down to something more pointed and readable. I'm a lover of he said, she said dialogue tags, but I took out some of those, too, as seemed wise.
The most cuttable thing about my dialogue was that I often had a character say a small paragraph of dialogue, with a bit of narrative interspersed, or maybe just separated by a dialogue tag. I like that kind of interruption, because I think it gives the feeling of a pause, or of real time in a conversation. But often, parts of these dialogue constructions were fat with unnecessary words--repetitive, not in the sense of saying the same words, but repetitive in linguistic content, as when someone says "John, close the window. I'm cold." In this sentence, "close the window" and "I'm cold" mean the same thing: they mean John, I want you to do something for me, and therefore, one of them can be ordinarily dispensed with (I say ordinarily, because sometimes there are good reasons for repeated linguistic content).
Some of the cutting, of course, is just plain cutting, nothing linguistic about it. If you're interested, you can read on and compare the cut and uncut beginning of chapter 25 (I cut about 70 words out of 290).

Original version:
“Now where did you say you’re going?” Granny Plain asked Jason.
He’d stopped by to mow the lawn in front of the barn and possibly get some cookies—a quick in-and-out. But his grandmother wanted to chat. She’d pinned him to the table with a glass of her special sweet tea and a plate of chocolate chip.
“It used to be a prison,” he said. “Out past Somerset.”
“I seem to remember that,” she said. The cat was on her lap, peering at Smokey, who was feigning indifference across the room. “Some of the Graves boys went there on a drug offense back in the ‘80s. Isn’t it empty now?”
“That’s the whole point,” Jason said. “It’s totally empty. Abandoned. No one’s used it for years, just kids coming in and hanging out, probably.” He wished he’d known about it when he was in high school—what could be cooler than doing a sixpack in an old prison? “It’s bound to have some paranormal energy built up.”
“No one got the chair there,” Granny Plain said, “if that’s what you’re thinking. It was strictly for drugs and small-time stuff.”
“Just because they weren’t doing the death penalty thing doesn’t mean no one ever died there,” Jason said. “I bet there were some cover-ups. Beatings. Or stabbings.”
“With a shiv?” Granny asked. She was a big fan of TV crime shows and old prison movies.
“With whatever,” Jason said. “So I’m going to go and get it on film, and we’ll see. Daytime first, and then maybe some night footage.”
“You’re not going by yourself, are you?” his grandmother asked. “I don’t like to think about you out there alone.”
“Smokey’s coming,” Jason said, and Smokey barked as if to affirm this.

Cut version:
Jason had stopped by to mow his grandmother’s lawn—a quick in-and-out. But his grandmother wanted to chat. She’d pinned him to the table with a glass of her special sweet tea and a plate of chocolate chip.
“Do you remember that prison? he said. “Out past Somerset.”
“Some of the Graves boys went there on a drug offense back in the ‘80s,” she said. The cat was on her lap, peering at Smokey. “Isn’t it empty now?”
“It’s totally empty,” Jason said. “No one’s used it for years, just kids coming in and hanging out, probably.” He wished he’d known about it when he was in high school—what could be cooler than doing a sixpack in an old prison? “It’s bound to have some paranormal energy built up.”
“No one got the chair there,” Granny Plain said, “if that’s what you’re thinking. It was strictly for drugs and small-time stuff.”
“That doesn’t mean no one ever died there,” Jason said. “I bet there were some cover-ups. Beatings. Or stabbings.”
“With a shiv?” Granny asked. She was a big fan of TV crime shows and old prison movies.
“With whatever,” Jason said. “So I’m going to go in and get it on film, and we’ll see.”
“You’re not going by yourself, are you?” his grandmother asked. “Smokey’s coming,” Jason said, and Smokey barked as if to affirm this.

still with metaphorical scissors in hand

Sunset yesterday.
Cut from the novel 5:
Isabel had never been the kind of woman who screamed, but she could feel one building, and she fought to hold on to it. Someone’s hand, someone’s body. She forced herself to stand up and go to the door. Later, she thought she should have left, just closed the door and gone back downstairs, saying nothing. Her hands were trembling but she didn’t want to touch the walls for support. She cleared her throat, looking out into the dark corridor, and called for Jason as loud as she could without letting the scream out of her throat.
That Isabel: what a drama queen. She'd be mad if she knew I was cutting her big scene short.

4 more chapters to go

Cutlet:
Carl looked out at the trees, and thought of the drowned trees in Rose Lake, even though he knew they weren’t there anymore, or not the way he imagined them. Stumps, uprooted logs that had floated to the surface. More likely they’d clearcut the big stuff before the dam went in. But his vision persisted, the giant trees reaching straight up from the floor of the gorge, their branches moving in the water, leaves fluttering with the current.
I might be done with this round of revision by Sunday night. And certainly by the end of January, which is the thought I'm using to inspire myself, when myself is contemplating the snowflakes falling in a lovely but annoying way outside my office window.
Two friends with new blogs: Voyage Artistique (from France!) and The Alternate Side Parking Reader (the NYC parker has started blogging).

cut and cut again

Cut from the novel 3 (from chapter 20):
1. She fixed her eyes on Dr. Kiniston’s face, which was a teacher’s face, but nice nonetheless. He was speaking in his droning classroom voice about the History of Logan festivals that had been held in the past, and the possibility of having one in the future, if enough money could be raised. All along the table, his listeners nodded their heads and made little mmhmm noises as encouragement, except for Mr. Six, who had fallen asleep. Augusta White gestured discreetly at him from across the table, plainly meaning for Isabel to poke him awake, but Isabel ignored her. Let him sleep, she thought. He’s happy at least. She set her lips in a closed half smile, willing her face to stay that way, and folded her hands attentively. I am interested, her face said. I am fascinated by the possibilities. Under this cover, she let her mind drift and slip away from the crowded room.
2. Dr. Kiniston was coming up in the ‘90s now. “As you all know, the festival was discontinued in, I believe, nineteen and ninety-three.”
“Are you sure?” Mrs. Mock asked. “I recollect that we had one that year.”
“I don’t think so,” Dr. Kiniston said.
“I put it together in my mind with my youngest daughter getting married—I’m sure it was the same year."
The woman next to her put up her hand, as if they were in school. “I thought Jeannette got married in ’92. I remember I wore a green dress I had that year.”
“I’m sure I’m right,” Mrs. Mock said. “And I don’t think you got that dress until much later, because I said to my husband when you bought it how it was so much like one I had, except for the stitching on the front.”
3. There was a story about a ghost there, but it was one of the less creditable ones, the kind of story that high school kids might make up to scare themselves on Halloween, about a warlock’s grave, with an iron fence around it to keep him in. There was a flat stone slab which supposedly was marked by a large crack that would suck you into hell if you stood on it incautiously. But it was only a group marker with several family members buried under it, the fence a common adornment to graveyards, a family boundary inside the larger community of the dead.

linkish

While I'm cutting, other people are being published! Kris of Book of Marvels has an article on boutique olive oil in the Christian Science Monitor, available online, here. And my friend MJ has a witty and timely piece on the vagaries of parking in NYC, here.
I'm up to 62 pages cut now, which seems like a lot, but also like not enough. On the other hand, that's enough pages for two fair-sized short stories.
Over break, I did 2 day-long writing retreats, one with my poet sister (hi, erieblue), and another with two other writing friends. Chocolate and mint tea were important parts of the inspirational rituals.

cut from the novel 2

Random cuts from Chapter 18:
1. It was two in the afternoon. She was looking at the ceiling, but for variety, she occasionally turned her head to look out the window at the neighbor’s roof, and the slice of sky that showed above it.
2. She didn’t look at Nancy. Her hands hadn’t stopped moving all the time she was talking.
3. She had a skirt, too, but she’d gotten a stain on it on the first night, at dinner with the principal at her old school. A pickled beet landed with a slap on her thigh, and she’d meant to soak it but forgot.
4. There was a box marked “Snapshots” in the corner, and she pulled it out, brushing the dust from the lid. When she opened it, she saw that they were mostly black and white. The one on top showed three people standing in someone’s back yard, two women and a man, dressed for Sunday. She didn’t recognize them. On the back, it said “Dollie and the two goons.”
5. It had been one of Maurice’s lunatic ambitions to build his own fence right up against theirs. But he had never gotten around to it, so there was chain link on the left, a 6-foot boarded privacy fence on the right, and in the back, one of those ancient constructions of wood posts strung with wire in a pattern of squares, overgrown with morning glory. The back fence was the one Maurice hated the most, and Nancy loved best.
6. She swept her eye down the table. “I for one don’t want to dwell on the morbid.”

so gone

Cut from the novel 1
OK,” Jason said. “What did he want it for?”
“He had an idea again about where that money might be buried,” Carl said. He heaved in a third box and went around to the passenger side.
Jason nodded. The buried money on Eldon’s farm was an old story. A cache of silver coins, maybe some gold, that Eldon’s great grandfather had buried during the Spanish-American war, when he’d been convinced that the U.S. was going to be invaded. This conviction turned out to be the first part of his going crazy, and by the time anyone thought to try and find out exactly where it was that he’d buried the coins, he was too far gone to say, or maybe too paranoid to trust even his loved ones. The amount that he’d buried was variable, according to who told the story, and had grown over time. Searching for it was Eldon’s hobby, along with auctions.
They rattled half a mile down the road to Eldon’s driveway, and then past his neat fields, planted already, probably in soybeans and the microgreens Eldon had gotten into since he found out how much they were going for in the Athens farmers’ market. Eldon’s house was white, blue-shuttered, with a pond in the front spewing water from a pipe in the middle, and a new pole barn up against the hill. “I’ll just run in and get it,” Carl said, but as they came to a stop, Eldon came out with his wife behind him.
“Well, stranger,” he said to Carl. “And hello to you, too, son,” to Jason. “You know Jason Plain, don’t you, Gussie? His grandmother worships over at the Baptist church.”

snip snipety snip

I'm on the 2nd round of cutting my novel now, which goes sometimes slowly and sometimes fast. Fast is when you can take out a chunk, as yesterday when I cut out a whole chapter--around 3000 words--chunk, into the virtual wastebasket, otherwise known as another file, because I can't bear to throw it away completely, or at least not yet. Very satisfying.
Slow is when I pick away as if the novel is an iceberg, frozen hard and impervious, and I attack it feebly, the tiniest chips of words and phrases being winkled out, melting as they fly through the air.
It amazes me sometimes how wordy I've been. Sometimes I can see my writing self making my way through the narrative as if it were a trackless jungle, the line of writing my only hope of seeing the other side. I can see the phrases and sentences I wrote while I was marking time, thinking on the page: what will Carl do next? what will he think when Isabel pinches him? who will he meet at the auction.
And I can see the places where I was thinking myself into the scene word by unnecessary word: he got up, he was standing, then he put his hand out to take the Snickers bar--all the gestures that in a movie might be beautifully meaningful and necessary, but that need to be pared away on the page so that the significant gesture, movement, expression stands out and is remembered.