{"id":124123,"date":"2015-12-06T14:08:38","date_gmt":"2015-12-06T14:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/12\/06\/i-must-remind-myself-they-cant-tell-that-i\/"},"modified":"2015-12-06T14:08:38","modified_gmt":"2015-12-06T14:08:38","slug":"i-must-remind-myself-they-cant-tell-that-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/12\/06\/i-must-remind-myself-they-cant-tell-that-i\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I must remind myself\u2014<\/p>\n

they can\u2019t tell that I didn\u2019t write this bit immediately after that one<\/p>\n

the six months where I ignored the manuscript are not visible to the naked eye<\/p>\n

the bit where I put my head in my hands and muttered \u201cI have no idea what I\u2019m doing\u201d takes place in the single space between the period and the next capital letter.<\/p>\n

As soon as I shove that character in, she has always been there<\/p>\n

and someone will probably say that she\u2019s the emotional center<\/p>\n

and the book couldn\u2019t have been written without her<\/p>\n

and nobody will know that I thought of her three thousand words from the end and scrolled up and shoehorned in a couple of paragraphs near the beginning because, for whatever reason, the story needed an elderly nun<\/p>\n

she was almost the cook<\/p>\n

and for about ten minutes she was the earnest young village priest<\/p>\n

and now she has been there since you started reading.<\/p>\n

I am sanding down the places where my editor found splinters<\/p>\n

kicking up a fine dust of adjectives and dropped phrases<\/p>\n

(Wear a breath mask. Work in a well-ventilated area. Have you seen what excess commas can do to your lungs?)<\/p>\n

and eventually it will all be polished to a high shine<\/p>\n

and hopefully when someone looks into it<\/p>\n

they\u2019ll see their own face reflected back<\/p>\n

instead of mine.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Editing<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

(via <\/p>\n

fuckyeahursulavernon<\/a><\/p>\n

)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I must remind myself\u2014 they can\u2019t tell that I didn\u2019t write this bit immediately after that one the six months where I ignored the manuscript are not visible to the naked eye the bit where I put my head in my hands and muttered \u201cI have no idea what I\u2019m doing\u201d takes place in the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[1834,338,4,45],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124123"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}