Editing, revising; like outpatient and major surgery of a living thing.
The laser zaps that clarify a vision, or work on twisted tense and typos to remove distracting moles. The cosmetic reconstruction of poetics to make it just a bit more pleasing. Transplanting words from one place to another, from outside source of necessary organs for survival, to layers of words lifted from a thigh to patch it all together. Removal of an unloved and unneeded spleen; but anguish with the loss of womb and all it seemed to hold for future needs, yet freedom is recognized as a result when grief is done. Amputation of fifty pages is as traumatic as the loss of limb, yet life goes on and adjustments made. Scalpels held by editors cut around and pluck out tumors and offending useless mass of flesh and plot alike.
Eventually, no matter what the depth to which it’s carved, a story looks around a darkened room and hops up off the white sheets of a bed or paper and recovers
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Sometimes I get lost in this world of a nip there and tuck here.I am trying to just plunge ahead, but keep having major shifts in tone and story.