Revising in Public: by Angie Powers

Okay, sorry about the hiatus last week. Lots has been going on at Casa Powers. Still and all, here it is. A couple of weeks go I mentioned the following as my goal to revising the piece:

1. It isn’t 100% quite “finished.” That is, my gut knows there is something not there yet about the piece, but my brain has no idea what it is.  It has not passed the gut check for emotional accuracy.

2. I do know that if I am going to do something with that car and that parking lot arm, I need to set it up sooner.  That arm probably represents the obstacles between where my protagonist is now and where she will end up. I need to set it up that way.

3. In many ways, she should already be flying before that scene happens. Or to put it another way, how can I embed the sense of flying in the descriptions of the character,  setting, in dialog to somewaht subliminally prepare my reader for what come. Or how can I use not flying in other places. It’s set at an airport hotel. But nowhere in there do I really work the metaphor – there’s room for that.

4. If I want her to “begin” at the end, I need her much more at the end at the beginning – does that make sense?

5. Her lack of name adds some pronoun confusion. I need to fix that. Give her a name or better manage those pronouns…

I’ve done my best to address these items. Do I think there are more things I could do? Oh yes. Very much yes. I think I am still too oblique.  But this is just an example of some choices I made to what I hope is improve the piece.

After this, I would let it sit, and take another look at it. Sharpen my intention, and then sharpen the work to that intention.

Secondly, I am lucky enough to have a super smart reader who helps me. I decide if I’ve hit my marks, and she helps me notice if anyone else agrees. Get yourself a reader, if you haven’t. One that can support you and who can cheer you on in the face of imminent public exhibition.

One of the things that comes up for me in this whole process is that I had no fear really of putting my first draft out (though that might just be selective memory). Revising and putting it out again has brought up some resistance in me.

Next week, I’ll take on some thoughts about the idea of public, not perfect. For now, let us all agree that it is hard to put yourself out there and I commend the folks who have been willing to do that so bravely in the comments. I’d love to hear how others go about their process of revision. How do you decide on making a cut or a change?

The car hammers the curb as she spins into the hotel parking lot driveway. Even as she cranks down the window, she can see that there is no one waiting for her. The booth is empty, the arm protecting that lot from the likes of her juts out like a Roman salute.  She sighs and considers for a moment storming the ramparts, crushing the arm and its yellow and black striped hostility, and flying through the gate anyway. But the idea fades as she catches a glimpse of herself in the rearview. Brenda. Late for Samantha Ricci’s Airport Hotel Tour of “Walk Tall and Carry a Big Lipstick.”  Today, this workshop is her last, best swing at life, and it looks like life has decided to swing back.  It’s foolish to pin so much on a workshop with 1500 other women all seeking someone’s blessing to stand and, well not BE counted, just to count To matter.. She’s not wearing lipstick, though. She’s not walking tall. She’s sitting on a vinyl seat that might just be sweating like she is.

Carefully, she reverses out of the driveway and cruises the streets around the airport hotel. A strange island in the middle of industrial wastes, the hotel rises above the bay, broad-shouldered and convinced of itself. Brenda thinks better of parking in front of the neighboring LaserTronics building, as the windows are boarded up and garbage blows about the lot, trying to rise.  As she watches a burger wrapper circle a broken parking stopper, a plane punches by above the building. The weight of the sound of the plane alone presses down on her and she watches, almost ready to argue with it. But  itis gone and she’s alone again in front of an abandoned building.  What the hell, she thinks. There’s nothing left here to steal.  She leaves a window open.

Inside the building, women rustle like crumpled paper as they shuffle into the main dining room, home to weddings and conferences like these. Everyone comes to an airport hotel to hope. She is standing here now, heels sinking into the carpet, hoping to become the woman she hopes she is inside. She does not want to be seen needing to follow the paper roses parade ahead of her.  Instead, she eddies out into a bar chair and looks at her watch. She’s got time. Twenty minutes or something. A woman wilts over a drink next to her. 

Brenda orders a mimosa. The daytime bartender at the airport hotel is gentle and he greets her above his bow tie with great consideration. The woman next to her stirs above her drink. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” 

 Brenda looks at the woman, who has still not lifted her head. “I’m sorry?” 

 The woman lifts her head all the way up on an over-limber neck. “We are not afraid of our darkness, but of the goddamn unrelenting nature of our light. Turn it off! Turn off the light, lady.”

 The drunk woman quoting various popular women of history and poetry is a sauced up Samantha Ricci. 

 “I think you’re wanted on stage. Soon,” Brenda offers. Something in her is falling. 

 Samantha lifts her glass. “I am always wanted. I planned it that way. These folks, they’re too busy looking at me to figure out how to be awesome on their own. You know? You know?”  Samantha’s breath smells a little like cigarettes. The falling also feels like rising, like a vertical version of watching a train pass. There is something that falls as it rises. What is that, she wonders, what is that?

 “What’s the difference between you and all those other women?”  Samantha swivels to her full height — she is an easy six feet.  “No, really? What?”

 Brenda shrugs. 

 “You didn’t pay seven hundred dollars to spend three days in a crap hotel, eating crap food and with a bunch of hopeless jackasses.”  Samantha downs her glass. “And that’s not fearing your light.” 

 She watches Samantha swim through the hallway, her hips a perfection of rocking motion and a dress designed to draw your attention just so. Brenda runs a hand down her own backside. 

 The bartender arrives to offer another round. Seven hundred and ten dollars is what she’s spent now. “No thanks.”

She realizes that the thing that falls and goes up at the same time is an elevator. She wants to be elevated. 

The humiliation of Samantha’s own condescension muffles her. One door leads to the low-ceilinged dining room with fake wood panelling. One door leads to – outside. Outside what though?  It doesn’t matter, somehow. She cannot fit anymore between those carpeted floors and tiled ceilings. 

She lolls in the bright spring sunlight on rock inches from the water, listening to the rise and fall of the parking lot arm, Romans saluting a better Cesar. San Francisco Bay offers up whispers of diesel and jet fuel. 

 Maybe she is asleep.  Maybe sun stroke, but she spins when she hears it, a car slamming through the lot arm. It does not swivel or turn, but barrels right at her. For a moment she is distracted by confusion — is it still accelerating? But her attention slaps hard on the car the moment it strikes her, and at first, she is horrified — she is certain that the paramedics will later tell her family that she died instantly, crushed beneath the car, buried on the polluted edge of the bay.  It won’t be true, though, because she can see the woman unconscious behind the wheel, she can feel her own feet pushing against the unsubstantial surface of the water, kicking up great rooster tails like a languid water skier. 

 She laughs. The imaginary paramedic really fucked up. Because now, she can see how far they have come over the edge of the water, she can feel her own muscles flexing still against the weight of the car. She has time to wonder how much time she has left to wonder.  Looking out over the car, she sees a group of people collecting in the parking lot. She expects them to move slowly, caught in the frozen second of her demise, but they don’t. They point. One person runs inside.  She looks down. They have stopped now — the unconscious woman, the car and herself. Over the water. The moment does not end. 

 She does not end. 

 She listens to the shifting frequency of the sirens as they approach the parking lot.  She leans back against the car, their collective direction reversing. As she labors back toward land, the water now slides backward beneath her.  She does not end. She begins.  

Better still, Brenda flies.