Thank you, Paul Simon, for the Rewrite

I usually don’t write about writing or motherhood. But lately, life is asking me to do a lot of what I thought I’d never do: change my course whether I want to or not.

I share all this from the perspective of an endurance athlete, because I’ve come to understand that the requirements for writing and motherhood demand just that — a deep reservoir of patience and stamina that I had little understanding of prior to the birth of my daughter. But my body, my spirit, and my entire brain have undergone intense rewiring ever since, and it’s taken me a full 24 months to adjust to, and accept, the more permanent changes within.

One thing that has changed is my awareness of the need to let go in the presence of my child. If only my mind could fully cooperate. Remember to email so-and-so about such-and-such. Take out this from the scene in chapter X. Get new sponges. Finish business plan. Thaw fish. And the zinger: organize baby clothes. Uh, when? I’m nowhere near mastering this kind of presence and don’t know if I ever will, but singing “Wheels on the Bus” between meals certainly helps deter the whirring To-Do list.

Here’s what I haven’t yet done since my daughter was born: put the baby photos in an album. It’s been two years and I still haven’t stopped to fill a photo album, even though the Shutterfly box with all 700 of them calls to me every day. I also haven’t made a baby scrap book yet, but I have a box of things she’ll no doubt love to see some day. I haven’t even made her handprints or footprints, but it’s too late for that. At two, she would rather hold a worm than plunge her fingers into paint, so maybe she’ll gently let me off the hook for this.

While raising my daughter, I have also been working on a new book, and this year, working on the rewrite.  When I first heard Paul Simon’s song, “Rewrite” from the album So Beautiful or So What, I busted up laughing. My husband had introduced it to me on his I-Pod and told me he loved the ‘swing’ in the song:

“I’ve been working on my rewrite, that’s right

I’m gonna change the ending

Gonna throw away my title

And toss it in the trash

Every minute after midnight

All the time I’m spending

It’s just for working on my rewrite

Gonna turn it into cash”

I loved the lyrics. Here I’d found a companion for the silent suffer fest I’d begun last November when I made my first round of submissions to agents.

What’s it like during submission season? A little scary and unnerving. All the courage required to write a book often seems to collapse the very moment we “submit” it. Why? Rejection is an inevitable reality. This is when singing “Wheels on the Bus” definitely helps to keep things in perspective, because it often feels like the wheels have come off the bus and that is being driven by a pigeon.

It can take weeks for one agent to respond to a manuscript. This radio silence often seems to amplify the chatter in my head. Did they like it? Do they want it? Will they find the right editor and the wildly enthusiastic and supportive publisher? Or conversely, when they reject it. What can I decipher from this cryptic rejection that I can apply to another revision? Because writing is rewriting. And submitting is learning to dance with rejection and let go.

I was fortunate to receive a workable note, which in short translated to: your novel is obese. I had already cut 80 pages, but after meeting with a former student, I realized I needed to cut two sections that substantially bogged down the pace. I had done the very thing that I had advised my student not to do, and she rightfully enjoyed telling me. I listened to her and decided to see if I could cut another 100 pages while I was at it.

So I set about the rewrite with an appetite for change and letting go I did not know I possessed. And something strange happened. In less than two weeks, I had cut more than 100 pages of my novel (190 total from the original draft), shrinking it down to a mere 373 pages, a much leaner and more agent-friendly version.

From 7:30 – 1:30, I did nothing but read and delete, and in the rarest cases, write any more. Almost simultaneously, my daughter slept for two and a half hours each afternoon. It was as if she knew I was working on the rewrite and had gifted me more time, so that when she was awake, we could roll Play Dough then cruise the sidewalk in the red wagon. Even stranger, I had the need to commit to meal planning to reduce the frig forage each night.

Something was shifting. I was letting go of the parts of my book that didn’t serve it, while serving my family more. I don’t know if this was a mere coincidence or just an underlying phenomena of the season itself, but the spring of 2012 has been a clearing out like no other. Got junk? Rewrite your life.

Writers are waiting for the stars to align, for a perfect match, for ‘the one’ to fall in love with the book and hopefully with them. We’re waiting for the ultimate validation — that our time at our desks, chewing pens and gum balls, deepening the furrows between our brows, adds up somehow. That whatever it is we were ‘asked’ to write or rewrite actually matters to someone else. That for some, splitting time between our careers and our children, is a healthy and wise choice in the 21st century.

I admire full-time working moms as much as I admire full-time moms. I am neither but a little bit of both, and each job further reveals my strengths and weaknesses. Sure, I’d like to write the perfect book and be the perfect mom, but I know she is the ultimate fiction. With imperfection comes wonderful opportunities to let go and grow, to lighten the load.

Hopefully, by the time Gracelyn is old enough to read these stories, she’ll forgive my shortcomings. That while I wasn’t focused on creating the perfect baby scrapbook, I did compile its elements. And that while her curly hair was often unkempt and her clothes encrusted with Cheerios, she’ll remember the nightly hula dancing with dish towels, the morning read-a-thons in bed, the eggs she learned to crack, the cookies she helped to bake, and the moments she spent in the garden learning to love plants and flowers, birds and bees. Hopefully, somewhere in her memory of being a baby will be a loop of laughter and love that rewrote her mother’s To Do List one spring and made it into a To Be List—one that even Paul Simon might approve.