Allyson, you have mail. Questions.

Just to let you know, the structure isn't nearly as bad as you think it is - what's off, big-time, is your tone. Off, as in, startlingly different from the rest of the book. But that's not a hard fix, not once you can see where it's wrestling with you.

Asked in email - do you want deep edits, general commentary, or both, or neither?

I can't see where it's wrestling with me. I'm pinned with my face to the mat.

Sent back!

School Lunches

A curl of metal in some overcooked vegetable ended my cafeteria days. That long moment when I held my tray and looked across the cafeteria, hoping against experience that someone would gesture me to a table, was hard enough on my digestion. It was against the rules, but most teachers selectively ignored the few of us who stayed in the classroom with our sandwiches and apples. We talked, we read, and occasionally risked our clandestine status by hanging out the windows, walking on the desks or laughing too loudly. It was the only community where I belonged.

Oh, Ginger. That one's very evocative for me.

Nicely done.

Oh, yeah, wrod.

Allyson, you have feedback and some deep edits.

I justfinished reading this second. I think it's worth trashing at this point, I can't write it, and I don't think it's important enough to struggle with like this.

OK - take a deep breath, step back from it. Smoke a cig or drink a coffee or whatever works, and then ask yourself, nice and simple: what am I trying to bring to life?

Ignore the piece as written, Just breathe in, breathe out, look at the theme - the BNF deal - and ask yourself the question.

What is this piece supposed to illuminate?

Once you have that, you've got the light in the tunnel. And for heavens sake, if you need to scream, ring me up. I listen real good sometimes.

She really does, Allyson. I'll send my cell number if you want it, too. But Deb's your woman right now, I think.

Yep. Check your email - and by the way, the essay? Isn't wooden. It's muddy in a few places, but only because you're overlapping on the connective tissue between the different things you're trying to do with it.

So of course it's fighting back, but honestly, you're trying to reel in a small trout, not a marlin. The areas that want fixing? They simply aren't that big, or that deep, or that hard.

It's all in the connective stuff. You may even want to split it out into two separate essays: one on the BNF deal and your experience at being one in a world the often perceives them as fakes, and then lead into the whichever strikes you as being where your light source is: sense of self coming out of your particular flavour of involvement in fandom would be my first guess, but I'm not you, and I could be totally wrong.

But I'm not wrong on the not-wood of the actual piece.