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Love Letters In The Sand

I am torn by guilt.

I just edited the previous post two days later because I was uncomfortable with some of it.

Not the content -- just a few phrases that seemed awkward.

For some reason I'm troubled by this.

Which is laughable. I'm the world's worst nitpicker and rewriter. I mentioned earlier that I'd put one piece through 57 drafts (a good portion of those on a typewriter) and I'm still not sure if it's ready to go out into the big bad world.

Still, revising one's work in full view of the public leaves me feeling queasy.

I drunkenly wrote a piece on the Great White concert fire in Rhode Island back in February and yanked it off the next morning, disgusted with my glib and shallow words.

I put it up again when I'd written a coda that covered my ass to some degree. (Not that it mattered -- no one's hit the original, nor the emendation.)

I'm not sure if I'm trying to protect the public's sensibilities or mine.

To quote (sort of, I think) Vladimir Nabokov:

Showing the first drafts of your work is like showing the contents of your handkerchief.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on June 2, 2003 4:15 PM.

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