Edits

I decided that I would finish edits to my project from November by the first of July. I started last week, opening the document and starting from the beginning, going through and line editing and trying to flesh out some things.

It is so painful.

I hate, hate, hate editing my own work. I don't think I'm particularly good at doing it, and the problem is that I always feel "Ugh, I've already read this, I fucking wrote it, how boring." I think if I could set things away for years, then it would be fine, I could edit well. For example: I have these massive three-ring binders hidden away in the bottom of a box of books at my parents' place that has printed-out copies of a ton of shit I wrote through high school and into my freshman year of college. Now, a decade or more (fuck, I'm old) after I've written all that stuff, I can look back on it and not get bogged down.

This was one of my biggest challenges in school, too, especially in college and grad school. In journalism classes I was always told to read through my stuff before I handed it in, but I never could. Not really. It's just so fucking boring, reading what I just did. I got pretty miserable grades on some stuff--my reporting teacher would dock 5 or 10 points for every little thing, like a comma in the wrong place or misspelled word--but I just could never make a habit of reading my stuff well.

Even in grad school, we were supposed to do lots of drafts and edit ourselves, particularly in this final-semester class on long-length narrative nonfiction. That class killed me. I love writing, and I enjoy editing other people's material, but I'm just too close to my own work to self edit.

I guess this isn't a surprise or anything. We're all too close to ourselves, too close to our decisions and lives and what we create, to accurately judge it. But then again, maybe ignorance is bliss. And maybe I'm an awesome genius who churns out Pulitzer prize winning first drafts and shits gold.

(Kidding. Just don't tell my editor I never read my stuff and don't ever intend to. I think just the concept would give her a conniption.)

Close Neighbors

It's official: I will be moving out of my one-bedroom apartment, where Fenway and I have been living on our own since last May, and will be rejoining the world of roommates come the beginning of June, the world of neighbors on the other side of walls who you have to actually get along with and all that shit.

Just to rehash, I signed the one-year lease on this apartment about a week before the first round of furloughs were announced at work. I even went through the trouble of asking the publisher if he thought we were going to have any financial issues, and he said no, so I signed and then BAM, paycheck cuts. Then two more rounds. We've been (knock on wood, cross fingers) without furloughs so far this year, but I don't trust it all.

Also, I've put a student loan on semi-deferment, and my grace period on that is up at the end of May, so I'll be looking at higher bills. It made sense to look for a cheaper place. I'm moving in with two other lovely ladies my own age who are renting a house, and I'll have more on that topic later.

As much as I adore living on my own, moving will be a good thing. I won't be stressed the fuck out about money all the time quite as much, and as of today, my AC in this little old apartment has gone out for the second time in the past three weeks. That shit's just not acceptable in this state. It's hot in here, and I can sit around in a tank top and shorts, but Fenway's stuck in his heavy fur coat. He's a snob like that.

Like I said, more to come later. For now, I'm going to spend the night at Dan's, where it's cooler, since the property manager won't do anything after 5 p.m. on a Friday unless the temperature is over 90.

Cats Eat Birds

My mother gave me a little Easter basket a few weeks ago, and I saved the Peeps because I wanted to share them with someone I knew would enjoy them the most. Besides seafood, the other food he adores is marshmallows. He's strange, I know.

We Are Family

This weekend saw a new addition to my little household. Behold: That Bitch.

Ok, so she doesn't have a name at the moment, or at least not a new name. She's a hand-me-down fish from a trainer at the barn, the woman who helped me find someone to lease Rio. She took in this fish, a female betta originally named "Barbie" by a five-year-old girl, several months ago.

Barbie got booted this week, though, because after living peacefully in a community fish tank, she turned into a serial killer and ate one guppy and seven shrimp just this week. The trainer, Mariam, was looking for someone to take her in, and I've always had a good time with bettas, so I offered to take her. Mariam's husband was the one who called her "that bitch" after her final killing, and I'm waiting for inspiration to strike before I name her again.

As you can see, girlfriend's scales are pulling apart because she ate so much. She's also got a nice gut hanging there, but hopefully she can do well on her own.

From the moment I brought her home, Fenway was excited. I had bettas before I had him, so his only fish experience is mooching seafood off my plate. He would rear up to peer in at the fish a bit better, but I tried to dissuade him from doing this because I could just see him knocking it over somehow and me being a fish killer. I eat a lot of fish, but I don't want to be responsible for the killing myself.


It's like cat TV. He spends half his time turning, wherever he is in the living room, so he can fix his gaze on the bookshelf. I did buy a new tank with a lid, since my others were open-topped, and I'm hoping that since the tank has yet to be sabotaged, we can all get along.

And while I don't have any photos of Little Jens Voigt, the last betta fish I had (who lived at home as well as on my desk at the Business Press until one day he died and was ceremoniously flushed in the middle stall of the upstairs ladies' bathroom), here's a photo of Noel, my first beta. I got him the first week of my junior year of college, and he lived until my summer internship in grad school. He grew to be massive, almost the size of this new fish, but he never ate other fish and he never got a gut. He did, however, fly home with me during Christmas and summer breaks when I was in college, and my senior year he largely lived on my desk in the newsroom at school. I would put him in a Gatorade bottle and take him on the plane with me, riding in the seat pocket. This was back in the golden days of terrorist watches, when you could still take liquids on planes. They always swabbed his bottle for explosives, but I think the TSA agents got a kick out of seeing some college girl carrying her fish everywhere. I was a dork. I still am a dork. I still think Noel was the best betta ever.