The Editing Hat

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November 10th, 2016

Powers Lake, just down the street.
Powers Lake, just down the street. (Click to enlarge)

Before I type any more words, especially about today’s title, I must apologize. I’m late with the blog today. Whether it was subconscious or not, or whether it’s just due to 10 and a half months of writing and three straight days of manic editing this week, I completely forgot it was Thursday. I remembered about a half-mile into a 2.5 mile walk around Powers Lake, a beautiful body of water, surrounded by a paved trail, only about a quarter-mile from home.

As I rounded a corner and mouthed the word “Hello” to yet another person out for a stroll (with music playing in my earbuds, it’s just easier to mouth the words since I wouldn’t know if I was whispering or shouting) I got a text from Barbara and when I looked at my phone to read it I saw the word Thursday. Egads! I had no choice but to finish the walk, and now here I am at 4:01 Central Standard Time, sitting down to write something.

Okay, so the title. I don’t have an actual hat that represents editing. It would be awesome to have a 1940s fedora with a card in the band that said “EDITOR” but I don’t. It’s symbolic. But this week has been all about editing.

I wouldn’t be anywhere close to where I am without Greg Halling. I wouldn’t be the writer I am now, either. He’s been that instrumental in teaching me new styles and finding the fat in the text. I watch his edits like a hawk, absorbing why his version always sounds so much better than mine. I’ve learned a ton from him.

As the Executive Editor of a real-live newspaper, though, he has not just a “real job” but a really stressful one. Newspapers don’t rest. They are in operation all the time. And he runs the place.

So, this week I took it upon myself to go back to the beginning and start applying what I’ve learned to what I wrote many months ago. The reason? Page count.

When I finished the final chapter, I dared to peek between my fingers to see what the final total was, in terms of pages. Not pages on my computer screen but pages in the book. You can get to that number by knowing what the average number of words are on every page, in a book format. That will get you very close. When I added them all up, and peeked at the number, it was 845. That would warrant my second “Egads!” of this blog.

My original goal was around 550. As I kept writing, I moved that number up to 625 or 650. That’s a LOT of pages, but there were just so many stories to tell. At 845, I faced the truth. There has to be some serious cutting and trimming.

So, with Greg swamped at work, I took it upon myself to start at the front and go paragraph by paragraph. If I could trim a page or three out of every chapter, that would get me to within visual distance of 700. Maybe. From there, Greg and I will sit down and do the really painful cuts.

Right now, I’m through Chapter 19 and have shaved 58 pages. That’s the good news. The bad news is that by this point in the process, I was absorbing more and more of Greg’s instruction, and the writing was getting more concise. At the beginning, I was the same wordy guy I am here. There was a lot of fat to trim. Now, it gets harder.

I found two full chapters that were full of detail but basically redundant. They came after major baseball points in my life, and in the previous chapter, before each, I’d described most of the guys I played with pretty well. For some reason, back in February or so, I thought it necessary to then follow each of those chapters with more in-depth descriptions of the guys. Looking back on it, that seemed dumb. And a waste of precious pages.

So, I killed off the redundant chapters altogether, but not before moving a few of the more critical things into the original chapters. Those chapters got a little longer, but the second ones disappeared completely. In all, I chopped close to 30 pages right there, and I really don’t feel like I lost too much really valuable stuff.

OK, there was one thing. One of our roommates, when Lance, Radar, and I lived in a white rental home we creatively dubbed “The White House” was a guy named Larry Donaldson. He was a gem and a great guy, but kind of hilarious in a goofy sort of way. He was a good sport about it, and a great roommate, but I felt the long description of him wasn’t totally necessary. So I cut it. Now Larry goes from multiple paragraphs to just a few sentences. Cuts are painful.

So, I present to you here, the bits about Larry that will not be in the book. Consider it like when a band puts out an album of previously unreleased tracks that didn’t make prior records. Here’s Larry Donaldson…

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Larry Donaldson was our roomie at the White House, and he inhabited the lower-level bedroom we’d have to traverse to get to the bathroom. He was at least 6-foot-5, killer handsome, and built like a brick house. Plus, he was a pitcher who was fortunate enough to throw with his left hand. When he threw off a mound for the first time at spring practice, we all stopped what we were doing to watch, figuring this might be the moment we all beheld greatness for the first time. He wound up, looking a little like Goofy from the Disney cartoons, and he delivered a “blazing” fastball at around 80 mph. Maybe. Larry was going to have to bedazzle them with guile.

He had a great personality and was a fine roommate when he wasn’t spilling milk from his cereal bowl onto the carpet, but he had a little bit of doofus in him that was charming. His original nickname was easy — Bo. That was in reference to the AM Radio pop band Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods. Think “Billy, Don’t Be A Hero”.  His second one dipped into sarcastic Latin. We put a sign on his bedroom door that said “Idiosus Villagus” and even Larry thought that was kind of funny, taking it to a whole new level of heinous humor.

Larry also had a ravenous appetite, and one of our favorite places for dinner was the Bonanza Steakhouse, for numerous reasons. You could get some good protein there, they had an endless salad bar, and each entree came with Texas Toast. Plus, with our student ID’s we got 25 percent off. Basically, for about three bucks you could walk out stuffed.

One night we sat next to a table of young ladies and Lance mentioned to them, under his breath, “Better be careful girls. Larry will reach right over there and take your bread,” and at that point the word “bread” was the only one that registered in Larry’s brain. He looked up, wide-eyed, and said “Did she say she didn’t want her bread?” in complete seriousness, as he reached for it. Both tables roared.

Early one Monday morning, when Larry was still in bed with his tube-socked feet sticking out from under the covers, I used the phone in his room to call one of my professors. For some reason, I wanted to cut a class that morning, and within my major I always called instead of just not showing up. I made up a bit of a ruse by saying, “Sir, I went to visit my folks over the weekend, in Kirkwood, and my car broke down. It’s getting fixed today, but I’m still here at my parents house so I don’t think I can make class. Can I come see you tomorrow to catch up?” After I hung up, Larry groggily looked at me and said “What’s wrong with your car?”

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So there you have that.

Powers Lake again, just because I can.
Powers Lake again, just because I can.

I’m leaving for Pomona tomorrow morning, so probably not much editing will get done before I get back on Tuesday. Originally, Barbara and I had plans to spend Monday and Tuesday nights on Catalina Island, where neither of us have ever been. I had hotel and ferry reservations all set, but work gets in the way too often. Her company called a major board meeting so she has to go straight from LAX up to Spokane on Monday. Fortunately, I was able to get refunds on everything.

We’re meeting in Pomona tomorrow. That’s kind of our life. One of us always seems to be heading off to some other place. She was in Chicago and San Diego already this week, and she just called me from L.A. Tomorrow, she’ll beat me to the hotel near the track so I made sure her name was on the room, as well. That way, she can check in.

Her flight isn’t until Monday evening, and we’re still debating about doing something “tourist fun” instead of spending both Saturday and Sunday at the track. Sometimes you need that. Disneyland might be calling…

And while on my walk, I listened to music from a playlist I built entitled “Trip Mix 2” which was a really creative title for about 8-hours of songs designed to help get us through our second drive across the country with the boyz.

And Powers Lake one more time. On November 10th.
And Powers Lake one more time. On November 10th.

On that playlist, is a song entitled “Sylvia” by the band Focus. You remember Focus, right? They were a band from The Netherlands who had a weird little hit called “Hocus Pocus” in which the keyboard player, Thijs van Leer, yodeled the vocals. They were an amazing group of musicians, but none of them were singers. Hence the yodeling.

On “Sylvia” their extraordinary guitarist, Jan Ackermann, plays his guitar as the vocals. It’s an extraordinary song, although 99.9 percent of American music fans never heard it. If you have a chance to download it, and want to hear some massively intriguing guitar work, do it.

And also, about my walk, today is November 10. I’m in Minnesota. I wore shorts and a t-shirt, and still worked up a sweat. We haven’t even had a decent frost yet. It’s insane.

So now it’s 4:37, and I still have to go to the store, figure something out for dinner, and pack. I’ll be leaving at 9:00 a.m. so I might as well do that tonight. Plus, because it’s who we are and it’s the lives we lead, I’m bringing a bunch of clothes and books for Barbara. With all the places she’s been this week, and still needed to get to the meeting in Spokane, she couldn’t fit it all in one carry-on. I’ll swap this stuff for what she doesn’t need, and she’ll be good to go.

Sorry so short. I won’t be so absent-minded next week. Off to Pomona!  And aren ‘t you glad you met Larry Donaldson?

Bob Wilber, at your service and leaving town again.

 

 

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