Review, Revision, Edit and Update
The number of revisions my episodes go through begin long before they are ever posted. I am improving slowly but steadily. Today's many revisions within this episode: back and forth sentence restructuring and reshaping throughout, with attention to my over-use of both proper and improper pronouns until I was satisfied.
Conservationist and author, Rachel Carson describes it best:
“Given the initial talent.....writing is largely a matter of applications and hard work, of writing and rewriting endlessly, until you are satisfied that you have said what you want to say as clearly and simply as possible. For me that usually means many, many revisions.”
~ Rachel Carson
Up to the House
There was little to visit about that evening. Neither Dez nor Emmie wanted anything more than quiet. Plans to watch a movie set aside, Emmie was reading, Dez was sketching. Emmie put her book down and watched her sister sketch with an ordinary pencil. Lines and curves appeared on a very ordinary piece of paper from the coffee table. Familiar shapes of a house and a large tree appeared. Emmie, sounding surprised, said “You’re sketching this house, Dez.” Her sister stopped mid sketch, glanced up at Emmie, looked back down at her work. “It just started out as a few lines. The house just materialized - kind of like Sarah does.” Dez had been curled up on the couch, using a hardcover book for an easel. She put down her book, page and pencil, uncurled her legs and sat up. Putting one foot up on the opposite knee to massage the tingling numbness away, she said “Has anybody ever really looked at your house? Like it is a part of us all. I mean, I’m not here that often so I shouldn’t really include myself, but I did live here when we were self-isolating.” Emmie looked thoughtful and walked to the living room window. “Of course you're a part of us, Dez. Speaking of Sarah, I wonder what she knows about the house, if anything.” Dez stood up gingerly, testing her balance on her wakening foot. “I’m not sure that’s what I mean. Not just the architecture or even what has happened in the house, but the house itself. I’m not making sense even to me.”
But it made sense to the old house as it settled with the creaking of its age.
“I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects
the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”
~ Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
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