Cassie 20/Jun/2006: I think this is the first time I have ever gotten a photo of ALL of them [photo of my birds].There are 25 birds here. Can you find them all?
Jim 21 Jun 2006: Those are fake plastic birds that you clipped on to the branches. I can tell because they’re not moving. BY the way, , As for the reading in NJ contract. are you sure you want me to wait until he signs it & sent it back to you? I printed it out & I have it ready. I know you’re working a full-time job, but please call him &, if he’s in, see if the contract you sent is alright. with him. If it n tell him to get it back asap. I just want to put my mind at ease, as i said, the deadline on the contract says June 14th. If you want me to call, then send me his number. I’m counting on that reading and I don’t have his number. Also, ask him what their zip code is. The contract doesn’t have the zip code w/ the courthouse address. Please give him a call & let;s nail this sucker. Let me know what’s up.. Thanks much, jim
Hi Jim,
I just got off the phone with my mom . . . it’s way past my bedtime (she’s in California) . . . but I wanted to check in.
When I was talking to my mom, somehow we got talking about children’s
books and she asked me if I remembered “Where the Sidewalk Ends.”
That book came out in 1974, so I would have been 9. I never read the
book but my sister, who is 5 years younger than me, loved it, and I
remember always seeing it on her night table and wondering about it.
Well, tonight my mom read most of it to me, and I discovered why I
love reading and why I love spoken word. I wish you could hear my mom
reading those stories. She LOVES them. When she reads them she puts
all the emphasis in the right places and giggles all the way through
because she just loves them. THAT is why I grew up loving to read,
and why I love spoken word. Until tonight, I never realized the
credit due. And even though it was my mom reading to me tonight, I
can also remember my father reading to me. To this day, whenever I am
with my parents, we encounter situations and find ourselves reciting,
for example, “One fish, two fish . . .”
My mom and I always talk for at LEAST two hours, usually more. At the
tail end of our conversation, my mom casually mentioned that my
grandmother, who is now in her 90s, had persuaded her to take her
collection of rocks. Rocks, you ask? Yes, rocks. In the same
session with my grandmother, my mother also procured my grandmother’s
wedding dress (I didn’t know it still existed — I had seen the 17″
waistband of it 25 years ago and had assumed the rest was lost) along
with some fur “shrugs.” (She called me, all excited. I was like,
“rugs? what rugs?) My mother hadn’t mentioned the rocks when she
snagged the wedding dress and the furs. I FREAKED when she told me
about the rocks. Not because of the rocks, because WTF cares, but . .
. To clarify, my grandfather was a miner, and he moved his family all
around California, Nevada and Arizona working different claims. Each
rock my grandmother has has a story behind it. My grandmother has had
an extremely interesting life, but she is a born wallflower, and it is
nearly impossible to mine the gold out of her! Did I mention her
father engineered the carrier that moved the “Spruce Goose” from its
hangar to the water? Do I have the story behind that? No! Anyway,
she is a total gold mine of stories but she is so shy it is nearly
impossible to get the juice out of her. The freakin’ ROCKS could be
pay dirt if my mom (or me) can get her to tell the stories around
those rocks!
Anyway . . .
I hope you are sticking to what we discussed. You should only be
working on dealing with the pieces that Betsy cut, making sure you
have addressed Paul’s edits, and NOT doing any additional writing.
Please, please, please do not write any more on this novel!
I’ve had some time to process what I looked at this weekend and I
think my proposed plan is good. I should get a photocopy of Paul’s
edits and a CD of your working draft, then go through your draft and
mark everything that varies from the copy Paul edited. Further, based
on what we did on Sunday, I think I should make some basic editorial
judgments comparing changes you have made vs. the version Paul edited
and evaluating direction. For example, in our first meeting, I looked
at the two paragraphs in which the protagonist agonizes over his new
found sexuality vs. his art and I recommended that you delete all of
the changes you had made, revert to what was in the draft Paul edited,
and revise the last sentence of the first paragraph of the two. We
then spent about an hour revising the last sentence. This eventually
worked out.
So what I’d like to do is to go through the whole draft looking for
the “bonus” material you added after Paul’s comments. My goal will be
to focus on the “bonus” material, looking for material that should be
added or deleted . . . and looking for places, such as in the
paragraphs we focused on this past Sunday, where you clearly need to
resolve or clarify something and where additional writing is needed.
Then we can get together and focus on finalizing all of the open issues.
I need to ask a BIG favor of you.
You are asking me to work on the last chunk of the novel. In order to
do what you need me to do, I have to read the ending.
Please, Jim . . . I have been waiting for this novel for more than 20
years. Let me read what leads up to what I am editing.
I just have to be very honest and say that I DO NOT want to give up
the experience of reading this novel for the first time. I wanted to
wait until it was published. I wanted to get the book and look at the
cover and look at the back and front and then wallow around in it. I
probably would have taken a few days off of work to read it and take
notes and make some web pages.
To be clear, I already know a lot of the story and a lot of the
details just from talking to you and attending your readings over the
past 20 years. I do not know “HOW IT TURNS OUT,” but that’s not
really what interests me. What is important to me is how the story is
told. Yes, I can get that even if I start with the last section of
the novel . . . but do you understand why I am fighting back tears
when I’m about to say I will work with you regardless?
Jim, I will work with you on this regardless of what you say, but I
want to make it very clear to you that if I continue working on the
last section of your book without reading what leads up to it, I will
be giving up something that is precious to me beyond words.
xoxo
Cassie