Rock You Like a Hurricane

There’s a hurricane. It’s already torn through one precious life en route to Florida.

So much hurricane prep to do. Because she starts early.

Hurricane kit assembled. CHECK. Propane tested. CHECK. Candles aplenty. CHECK. NOAA saved to mobile device. CHECK. List of South Florida people for follow up after the storm. CHECK.

Hurricane watching gets old.

But this is why she’s really here.

REVISION TRACKER:
CHAPTERS MARKED UP – ALL OF THEM!!!
DAYS SPENT MARKING UP DRAFT – 4

Now the fun of writing REALLY begins. She may spend days agonizing over one chapter. Return to the same paragraph twenty or fifty times. Try multiple variations of the same theme, swap out words for their synonyms, flip everything from back-to-front and front-to-back. Get flowery with her metaphors only to strip their stems bare. Trash gaggles of words she made.

A revision of a first draft is when the work of writing really begins.

Revisions are the endurance walk across three states, the Ironman Triathlon, the Mount Everest summit. They force the writer to lie in a field, stinking of her own shit, and swear she cannot go on. The words are steel barriers she cannot climb. Steps her feet won’t take. Chasms she cannot leap. An all-consuming process that will take weeks and weeks and weeks.

Creators create because we cannot stop ourselves. We cannot hide our light. Without creating, we die. It’s compulsion, addiction, the highest-highest high. We scrape our souls clean, wring ourselves dry, and hope someone will care.

Enjoy the weekend everyone!

To see what Andra has been writing in series fiction, visit The Aftermath of Death, She Was Venus in Fur, Grief Out of Balance, For the Love of a Gun, Death by Toilet, Biscuits, Gardenias and a Funeral and Everything Dies. She’s also on Medium with a new story HERE.