not quite, but close (brief and probably erroneous thoughts on copy editing)

This coming September, Temple University Press will publish a collection of my essays and photographs called Love: A Philadelphia Affair.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that I've spent the better part of yesterday and today with notes from the very gentle copy editor. Which is to say that I've spent these hours in rigorous mortification of myself.

Okay, so maybe that term doesn't make actual sense, but I'm just going with it, because, hey, might as well be myself. Or, I could fill the rest of this blog with commas that, shouldn't, be there. Or maybe I should just use the same phrase twice. (I'll use the same phrase twice.) And if I seem to be calling you by your surname as I speak to you here, why don't I just switch it up and go with your given name? Nothing like keeping a reader on her toes? His toes? Their toes?

And if I tell you that I'm moving toward you, you'll know what I mean. That I am moving TO you. See? I've just arrived.

It's not even what the kind copy editor has noted that remorses me out. It's what I see in myself, my old writing tics, my go-to poetics. It's me on the page, and golly by joe (I'm making more things up), I often wish I were other.

Was other?

Why can't I write like Michael Ondaatje at his best? Why not Alice McDermott at her most precise? Why Why Why couldn't I have bought my Kitchen Aid sooner (KitchenAid?) and given my life over to olive oil cakes and fudgy brownies? Fudge-y brownies?

I want a do-over, Writing Life.

I want a better brain.