Month: October 2005

Devil’s Gift

I am going to give you a gift. I am going to give you a single day to do exactly what you want. A day where come midnight, the last twenty-four hours will become nothing but a memory for you to savor.

A day without consequence. A day of complete freedom.

What will you do with that day?

Will you kiss every girl and guy you meet just to watch their reaction? Will you be completely, painfully, honest with everyone you care about? Will you give away the ending of the latest Harry Potter to your book club? Will you sleep with your best friend?

Will you hold up a bank? Will you buy a cherry red Ferrari on credit and drive to Vegas? Will you try every drug you’ve been curious about? Will you poison your neighbor’s noisy dog? Will you tell every bad boss you’ve ever had exactly why they shouldn’t be allowed to even manage a McDonald’s? Will you get that tattoo? Will you buy yourself a pony? Will you take a punch at a Hell’s Angel?

Will you sing for your friends like you do when you’re alone?

Will you forgive?

Will you bungee jump? Will you jump out of a plane? Will you *fly* a plane? Will you run naked through your neighborhood? Will you try exotic foods like octopus, squid, chocolate covered ants, or camel hump? Will you tell a stranger all of your secrets (every single one)? Will you steal the last slice of apple pie?

Will you make a small firepit in your backyard, using all of your bills as tinder, and roast some marshmallows? Will you eat a whole box of Godiva chocolates (except the cherry-centered ones)? Will you cross the street without looking? Will you call your old friend from college that you haven’t spoken to in ten years? Will you paint your house like a candy cane, red and white, red and white?

Will you love without regret?

For one day, will you stop being afraid?

What will you do with the Devil’s Gift?

Revisionist

I can remember the day I became a revisionist; required reading for my High School’s AP reading class was Strunk and White’s Elements of Style and the one lesson I took home from it was that less can be more (not to say that the rest of the tiny book was any less useful, but this is the point that I took to heart). Later that same year I wrote a short story (“A Game of Chess”). Giving it a once over, I recalled Elements of Style and Strunked it. I cut out the first two pages, about another page and a half from the middle, and a little off the end.

Then I re-read it. It went from being a mediocre short story to being a viscously tight horror story.

I’m not obsessive about editing my writing. I always do a brief edit to spellcheck and I go through the motions of obeying grammar rules (not with any great enthusiasm, mind you – I figure I can always claim poetic liscense (who hands those things out anyways?)). But while I’ll tweak a few things here and there (I have a habit of leaving out entire words that I thought I had written down), I won’t sit on my writing for days to get it perfect.

On the other hand, I feel absolutely no guilt at all about going through my writing later and re-editing it until it barely resembles its original form. I love writing – but I’m not so attached to my words that I won’t erase them on a whim or pervert its meaning into twisted new forms.