As you say, Steph, it does need some editing and polishing, but yes. Make that Yes! it makes all kinds of sense. Very strong and very affecting. And something that most of us can relate to, on at least some level.

And, I just now found it. I haven't seen Garden State, so as soon as I saw the first line, I thought uh-oh, movie, won't have anything intelligent to say, best keep moving. I've read it now.

In re the piece, it's extremely powerful. It actually made me hear music in my head, in this case, "Unsent", Alannis Morisette's thing about unsent letters to old lovers. There's a certain congruence between the two.

In terms of polishing and length, I think the power in it, the sense of longing it conveys, the quietude behind it, negates any need for polish (or my definition of polish) - it might actually damage it. And I don't think it needs adding to, unless you've left out something deliberately.

edit: Bev, why do you think it needs editing? I thought it was clear, and very straightforward, and very poignant as is.

Liked it a lot, Tep. Except it made me conscious I've never had someone like that, not really. Although I thought so once.

the sense of longing it conveys

See, that's the tone that my small group got, in spades, but I didn't intend for it to come across that way. I don't know if that's good or bad.

As somebody who writes best naked(emotionally, you pervs,) I think it's good.

I don't know if that's good or bad.

Honestly? Neither. It's what it is.

That's one of those emotional feedback "ping ping ping" moments: while it may not be what you intended, it's what a chunk of readership took away from it, courtesy of their own issues, at least in part.

So the piece gets an emotional landscape, a whole secondary life, that you, as the author, didn't intend.

When mine do that, people always say "That's so sad!" And I think "It is?" I guess I'm better at playing hurt than I thought.

erika, nope - it's sad as filtered through the reader, not sad as you wrote it. That's the point, for me; that's where the work gets its own life, not from what I meant, but from what the reader, any and all readers, take away from it.

Said it before, saying it again. If the reviewer in Jacksonville saw the plague in Plainsong as "a sly take on the Rapture", how is she wrong? She's only wrong if she insists it's what I meant or had in mind when I was writing it.

But what I meant doesn't and shouldn't dilute her take on it, because it's valid for her, and it gives her acceptance or dismissal of the book a whole new dimension.

And somewhere in the Bible Belt, where they actually believe in this Rapture thing, someone's read it and taken that with them into their memory banks, and the book has a different breath from where I was going with it.

Where's the downside?

I want that, and I haven't felt like that with anyone for a long time. Romantically, I mean, which is a whole different level, a whole different type of feeling like home, than there is with friendship.

This could be cleaner. "I want that, and I haven't felt that with anyone for a long time. Not romantically, which is a completely different level, a different type of feeling like home than there is with friendship."

"Or, rather, I made myself think that he was, because of how much I wanted him to be."

Small things which would help the flow without diluting the power. It is wonderful as is. I think a small polish could still make it better. YPMV.

Bev, you mean just cleaning up and tightening?

I didn't really look for that; I was going more for the effect, since I read it as a rumination (in Teppy's LJ, before I read it here), rather than as an essay.

On that definition of polishing and tightening, yep, total agreement.