Separated At The Hip

Rose,

So I finished my creative thesis, another draft of my novel Life After Martyrs (one thing I can't figure out: is it Life After Martyrs or Life after Martyrs? I figure Kathleen Driskell will tell me which one it is. Since it's the title of my practically finished novel, I almost want to call it LIFE AFTER MARYTRS!!! BITCHES!!! But I'm not sure if that's the best title for a YA novel with serious themes and crossover appeal).

Anyway, I "finished." It's so difficult to know when you're done. I told Robin in my cover letter that even if I wasn't "done," I was DONE. I literally couldn't read through it anymore. It's like when you say the same word over and over again and it just dissolves in your mouth and your tongue gets swollen with it.

But that's always been my problem. Not just with revision--in school, I was always the first person to finish a test or turn in a paper but I absolutely refused to read over my work--but particularly with revision. I know some people talk about loving revision, spending years painstakingly adjusting sentences, but I'm not like that. I write in a fury, I pour myself into it, so when it's done, I'm done.

But it's the story of my life. Here I am at 30 weeks. I'm not done--still another 10 weeks to go--but I'm DONE.




Just imagine how big I'm going to be during residency!

Love,
Kristin

Dear Kristin,

How is it already time for lunch where you live?  I just woke up, stumbled to the tea kettle, and briefly considered going back to bed.  I never imagined the time difference would make the distance between myself and nearly every one I've ever known feel so real.  I imagine writing these letters on precious paper with a quill pen, having them delivered by the pony express or something, and winding up on your neighbor's door six months later, only to be blown away by the wind.  At least now there's this.

I envy your beach time.  Even though we now only live the miles from a gorgeous beach,  we've been so busy, so much, that I've only been once.  Having only one car doesn't help.  But, I'm sure that once we get into a routine and familiarize ourselves with this place, we'll be able to go sit on the beach and read all day.  In the meantime, I'm revising and revising and revising.

The rewrite was a little bumpy, but on the whole not too bad, until I got to the current chapter.  Two characters meet, they make friends, they begin a new chapter (literally) together.  Why is this so hard?  Why does it continue to ring false?  When I wrote this chapter the first time it was hard.  It drove me a little crazy and I had to watch endless amount of Cheers reruns to recover.  Here we are again and Geraldine is driving me crazy.  Hopefully I'll get past it today and my next post to you will be about how successful I feel the rewrite went.

For now, I'm going  for a run.  Hoping to clear my head.

I'll leave you with a picture of me and the ocean. 

Love,
Rose

Rose,

Aren't you glad that you decided to start a blog with me? You moved across the country--bought a new car, packed up your house, gave away most of your possessions, drove 3000+ miles--and managed to get a substantial amount of revision done on your novel AND you blogged.

And after weeks of radio silence, here's my sorry-ass attempt to blog back.

I'm really a terrible blogger. You could blame it on my hectic life. Sure, I've been busy. About the time you headed out west, we went up to Massachusetts for a week.

Here is the one and only picture I took of our journey:



Ohio corn fields. Unfortunately, the drive from Kentucky to Massachusetts does not contain much purple mountain majesty. This is pretty much what Ohio and most of Pennsylvania looks like.

But we spent the week in one of the most beautiful places on earth. I love New England beaches. The weather is temperamental, the ocean is bitterly cold, and the beaches are pebbly and covered in seaweed. You really feel like you're earning your beach in New England, know what I'm saying? So I was in a really beautiful locale for days and days and most of my time was spent walking on the beach, sitting in a chair looking at the beach, reading novels and falling asleep--on the beach. And here is the only picture:

Noticing a trend? I think I'm a terrible blogger not because I'm not a good writer, but because I fail to document my life extensively enough. What the hell is the good of an iPhone if I can't even click a few pictures now and then of what's going on?

But sure, I've been distracted. I too have been finishing a novel and trying to get through school. We've been renovating the house (some more). And I've been gestating a freaking human being! (All of these activities, by the way, seem to require a lot of time dedicated to watching episodes of Angel.)



So anyway, I'm a sorry excuse for a blogger. But we're Separated at the Hip, with a whole big country and three time zones stretching endlessly between us. So I guess you're stuck with me!

-Kristin

Dear Kristin,

I'm so glad we got to see each other this morning before Scott and I left for Los Angeles.  UCLA Film School is a fabulous opportunity and we absolutely cannot wait to get to our new home, but of course the build up to this trip has been crazy.  We've spent the last two weeks cutting our possessions in half.  Packing.  Cutting in half again.  Rinse. Repeat. So on.  So forth.  By about 5:30 this afternoon, nothing felt that important anymore and we just wanted to get in the car and drive. So that's what we did.
Now we're in O'Fallon, Illinois.  It's wonderful.  It's just so nice to be making progress.

Tonight, on the interstate in Indiana, we drove past a back yard full of model airplanes.  They were all painted silver and mounted on poles to simulate flight.  There were tons of them and if I were a little bird I'd fly over all of them again and again to pretend I was flying higher than the real ones.  It was only a second.  Then they were gone. 

I am so exhausted and my head is spinning.  I've revised 67 pages of Antigone so far and I'd really hoped to finish another ten or so during the week but it looks like I'll be doing quite well just to get a facebook post up every now and then!

Tomorrow is a 12-hour day and it's all Kansas.  That baby's a straight-up rectangle and we're cutting right through the middle of it.  Hope to send you several pictures.  Though they may all be of corn fields.

In the meantime, here's one from this morning: