What the heck is this? Read and find out.
Feeling a little frustrated that revising seems so demanding and difficult. It’s almost like rewriting every single line. It’s like being given a big lump of clay and asked to make a statue.
The hardest thing of revising isn’t simply about working on the words in the manuscript, but moment by moment critiquing yourself, wondering your ability, dissipating doubts yet accumulating an avalanche more. It’s adjusting not only the plot, the point of view, the styles, the words, the dialogues, but fine-tuning internally the big question – what the heck are you doing?
These two days I got updates from two long non-contacting friends. One is a missionary who’s to go to study MDiv in South Carolina. One is a young woman making her advance in NYC working as an assistant to the Vice President of a huge bank. I think I could not help comparing and wondering what I am doing. It gives me a shudder to recall we all used to be in the same fellowship. We chose different paths, all having our own aspirations — whether to glorify God or to climb the corporate ladder. When thinking of them, I feel a little bit scared of the path I vow to choose and feel I want to be anyone but me.
Truly revising one’s writing really isn’t about writing. It’s about something internal — wondering again and again the path of writing. It’s about adjusting and finding the right mindset internally. Being realistic. Being merciful. Being simply truthful. Being loyal to one’s heart.
I look at my manuscript and find it really like a lump of clay, but I should also give myself a pat on my shoulder as I at least have some clay to work with. Whether I discipline myself well enough or have the ability to revisit it and remould everything is another matter.
To free my mind from freaking myself out, I baked a round loaf of beetroot bread, made my first pasta with beetroot juice, and incubated some fresh yoghurt. On top of that, I showered with chocolate shower scrub and smelled a mixture of chocolate, beetroot and bread when I was in the kitchen.
My kitchen is extremely basic. I don’t have any pasta maker or even a rolling-pin. All I used was beetroot, flour, and a wine bottle, and pasta was relatively easy to make. Soon, I don’t have to buy pasta, like what I did with bread. One day if I live in the middle of nowhere, as long as I have flour and milk, I can still pretty much have things I love. Bagels in the middle of Amazon forest; fettucine in Greenland; yoghurt in Namibia.
Enough roaming around, get to put my hands on my dirty clay and work on it till it takes some kind of shape.
Drying my beet pasta Beetroot bread right from oven with cream cheese
Beetroot bread with cream cheese
P.S. Fresh home-made pasta has a chewiness that accompanies my salmon and broccoli toppings well. Eat well, and hopefully tonight, sleep well. More, tomorrow, work well.
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