Work, work, work

Working on revisions this morning. It was painstaking having to condense those first few chapters, but I think I did a decent job. It was really messing with my brain, keeping me up at night, haunting me, ruining snack breaks—you get the picture. I was scared. But I think the hardest work is done and now it's a matter of trim, trim, trim. The old saying comes to mind: kill your darlings.

For fun, I'll post a snippet of something I have on the back burner. It's a piece originally meant for a short, but it grew and grew. It's called DreamDate. Thelma is on a self-proclaimed man diet when she stumbles across an ad for a free latte. All she has to do is log onto DreamDate.com to redeem the coupon, but what she gets is a whole cache of naughty Ward Cleavers. Dan, the most naughty looking Ward Cleaver in the bunch, reaches out to her and convinces her to go on a non-date date. Anyway, here's the opening:

Five years and ten failed relationships. One with a marriage that lasted only a week—how was she to know he’d have a nun fetish? The others were all rebounds to forget said marriage. Then there were lots of horrible dates in between, each one fizzling out the moment she realized men just weren't as cool in real life as they appeared in movies. Damn that George Clooney. Real men all had some sort of . . . problem. Mommy complex, daddy complex, mommy-daddy complex. Can’t make love with the lights on, can’t make love without Larry King playing in the background, can’t make love . . .

Thelma Partridge was starting to wonder if she was just allergic to men. If so, she wished there were some sort of medication, some new wonder pill like the kind you saw on TV: Femfix, the pill that makes farting, rude language, all day ESPN, and obnoxious driving seem romantic. One dose and you’ll be running your fingers through his back hair with pleasure. Warning, missing a dosage of Femfix may cause you to wake up screaming when you see your apartment has turned into a bachelor pad full of dirty socks, empty beer bottles, and half-eaten burritos. Femfix is not responsible for mental damage caused by being turned into a human coaster.

Gah. Forget the magic pills, Thelma was just going to give up cold turkey. Toughen up. Reweld the chains on her chastity belt. Take up scrap-booking—collect doilies—get a dog. Anything but men.