Today was my second marathon editing session for Hell-Bound Train. The day began with helpful comments from a friend in the Southern Hemisphere and the evocation of Stephen King, chanting "The road to hell is paved with adverbs."
Once alerted to the adverbs' presence, I cannot avoid seeing them. They're laired everywhere within the manuscript--weasels lurking to pop out and slow down the action or muddy my descriptions. Mentally, I throw my hands into the air, hyperventilate, and run around my desk like Kermit the Frog before a Muppet Show. "Ah, ah, ah, AH," I realize I am yelling out loud. My cat, Mitzi, jumps from the desk and stares at me as if I had transformed into an inhuman monster.
I lift my pen like Tony Perkins in Psycho and begin stabbing at the adverbs. Almost, suddenly, nearly, closely--they all fall before my onslaught. There are ls and ys flying to either side of me as they're excised. I realize that in the early days of my Urbanagora content, I used those words to shield me, to enable me to equivocate or retreat from an untenable position if a critic attacked. I don't need them anymore, by God.
Now it's passive voice that's everywhere. These columns sound like goddamn lab reports. Slash, rewrite, annotate, cross out entire redundant paragraphs. Pant, pant. One entire piece goes in the trash--not worth saving.
My word babies crawl from beneath the wreckage of a demolished essay on polygamy, mewling like kittens calling for their mother. They stop to lick remnants of the blood and gore of murdered language from their fur. They stare up at me, wide-eyed, and ask, "Is it over? Is it safe to come out now?"
"Very soon, my darlings," I reassure them.
I've made progress. Nine more weeks of this to go.
Tom Trumpinski
That was a fun Tommy!
Nice Tom, you've convinced me that you genuinely know what you're doing over there in your mad rhetorical laboratory. I'm impressed.
I feel your pain, Tom. I spent all of last summer (~3 months, 12 hours a day) editing my thesis/paper, and I know how terribly mundane and tedious it can be. Rest assured that the payoff in the end will make it all worth it. Don't pull too much hair out.
I meant to say "Nice Tom, you've convinced me that you genuinely, truly, actually, sincerely know what you're doing over there..."