Thursday, July 14, 2011

exorcism

I composed a post three pages long describing the past four days of projectile vomitting and other niceties, but pulled it in a rare act of humanity. I felt like a parentless child in need of someone to hold my hair and tell me I'd be okay, but my husband, who is not a nurse, was away at work and school, and I had only yapping dogs to comfort me. It was really hard. It was norovirus. I think its about over. Whew.

But while waiting for my head to spin around on my shoulders ala Linda Blair, I managed a good deal of editing. Managing, for example, a 393 page find/search of the following: all "ly" words (I think they're called adverbs: morosely, fanatically, tragically, joyously, frankly,); the word 'had'; the action 'nodded,' as in: 'she nodded.' (Turns out people don't nod that much really. But in my manuscript, the characters are nodding fools); the words 'that,' then', and 'when.'

I hate my manuscript. But press on.

So, in rebellion, I offer the following sentences:
(original)"Yes," I had nodded enthusiastically. "She had been vigorously vomitting."
(eidted) She puked.

2 comments:

Kristiana said...

hallo! i'm glad you are starting to feel better. i got your message but my intentions to call you back got buried in the avalance of daily life. can i bring you anything? i'm at work now, passing away the last few minutes before i head home. i will call you tomorrow. i'm leaving for a conference on saturday evening and will be gone for a week or more -- the 'or more' is still up in the air -- but will be around the last week of july. hopefully this will be an ongoing thing, availability. i am planning to jettison every non-essential thing in my life. hopefully it will be a reality by the time i pass away of old age. i imagine myself finally attaining happiness living in a room no more furnished than a japanese tea house. we'll see, we'll see...

someone said...

I go through that tea house thing from time to time. Great for the yard sale.