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to go before i finish i ve already learned a lot about the editing process and my own writing style 1 i am still in love with my characters and storyline the book moves at a brisk pace with the right blend of humor surprising turns of events and relationship building 2 back in college i remember a lit professor who resembled the weird old man who keeps all the scary secrets from hapless victims in any number of horror movies telling me i wrote like a hunter s thompson wannabe hack meanwhile my journalism and creative writing profs were praising my writing and saying i had a promising career ahead of me after a few semesters of being swatted like a ping pong ball between you rock and you suck i came to a realization i am not a literary writer i am a journalistic storyteller i prefer vivid scenes to metaphor and gripping dialogue and events to allusions and theory i can t write a page comparing a tree bending in the breeze to being resiliant through life s hard knocks without snoring i d rather say the same thing with a ghost who breaks down because women can no longer see his tallywacker i ll never be published in a literary journal or please readers who prefer that writing style i tell a different kind of story for a different audience but i still must be careful not to overexaggerate and rely on hype in my writing i m not a hack but i can go down that road if left unchecked a lot of my editing has been toning things down just enough 3 i have been taking my imaginary machete to lys she moved quietly he said gently she ate piggishly ok no one in my book eats piggishly but you get the picture overall i was good about showing not telling but often i fell into the trap of letting a ly drive home a point an occasional ly is ok but when they crop up like mosquitos on a humid summer night they gotta go 4 dealing with backstory bites the line between not enough and too much feels almost invisible this has been the toughest parts of my editing process but i m plowing through it 5 my favorite part of editing has been coming up with subtitles for each mini chapter while not necessary i think they add flair and fun to the book as i edit each segment i keep the need for a perfect header in the back of my mind this hunt for a phrase that captures the essence of the segment helps me analyze the chapter s flow i d love to hear about the editing experience of others who care to share posted in creativity fiction the naked man whore chronicles writing writing a novel tagged editing editing a book editing a novel first novel writing writing a book writing fiction 11 comments the man in the mountains posted on march 12 2013 by hawleywood40 wade ruggles preston county journal one of my heroes looks like a movie star president but my love for him has nothing to do with his resemblance to an american icon march always makes me think about my great uncle weach one of my paternal grandmother s four brothers his name was actually wade ruggles but he got the nickname weach as a child and it stuck uncle weach was a coal miner in the mountains of preston county west virginia he had three sons his oldest jimmy was my father s age and died of hodgkin s disease as a teenager his other two boys were born much later steve and dave were teenagers when i was a little girl they taught me to roller skate and took me swimming in the cheat river during summer vacations coal mining is hazardous work and not likely to make the average worker wealthy but uncle weach knew how to spend both time and money on what was most important his family had a cozy farmhouse on a winding country road with their own small pond nestled behind it he also had a campsite along the cheat river where he built a trailer that a family could live in quite comfortably when he retired he decided the children in his extremely rural mountain community in tunnelton west virginia needed a gathering place he turned an old building into a roller skating rink it was there that uncle weach and my older cousins taught me to skate i have so many unique and wonderful memories of uncle weach and there s only room here for a few of my favorites he tamed a raccoon that hung out in his yard to the point that it would waddle onto his porch and was even allowed in one room of his house he loved sharing his campsite with family one spring break my then fiance and i decided to take a trip there the camper had gone unused most of the winter and weach made the mountain drive to air it out for us we were behind schedule and didn t arrive until nearly midnight when we got there i found my great uncle asleep in a recliner with a carton of ice cream melting in his lap he was snoring and had strawberry goo on his jeans he gave the best bear hugs ever he wasn t a tall or big man by the time i was sixteen i stood eye to eye with him that year the daughter of another of my great uncles got married i wore heels to the wedding i saw uncle weach and realized that i was looking down at the top of his head but when he grabbed me up in one of his big warm hugs i still felt like a little girl being embraced by a friendly giant he loved children and had a knack for making each and every niece nephew or skating rink visitor feel like the most special kid in the world i was an awkward clumsy self conscious girl who took forever to grow into her body and her sense of self i hated gym class with a passion sports in school are an exercise in humility for clutzy pre teen girls who stand a head taller than their classmates and have horrible hand eye coordination kids are harsh especially adolescent girls and i was the unwilling star of my own freak show i spent my days trying to disappear into the background but weach could make even a kid with no self confidence feel talented and special and happy to be alive and out and about in the world at home i was the girl who faked injuries to avoid gym class humiliation on endless summer days with uncle weach i was the girl who swam in a river for hours rowed a boat climbed slippery slopes to get to the best fishing spot and skated like a champ he made me feel like my uniqueness was a good thing not something to hide he treated his wife my aunt jeannie like gold she was a sweet homebody who raised her children and volunteered at her church she tolerated a raccoon in her house with a good natured sigh because she loved weach as much as he loved her when he passed away she was lost uncle weach was in perfect health most of his life in spite of a career with a legacy of lung damage in his late 70 s he woke one night and asked for an ambulance he told aunt jeannie he didn t think he would be coming home he didn t long before that night he purchased their grave plot beside jimmy the son he and jeannie had lost many family members rest in that cemetery and my grandmother would walk my cousins and i there to visit shortly after i learned to read we stopped by jimmy s grave i saw wade and jeanne ruggles etched on the next stone over and flipped out as a child i didn t understand preparing to be dead ahead of time grandmom tried to explain it to me but i would not let it go until i saw weach for myself so we walked home and called him he showed up right away swooped me up and said silly girl he has rested in that cemetery almost 20 years now and i still feel like the wonder of those mountains diminished just a little when he left he was larger than life in the best way possible and i still miss his bear hugs some blame a life not lived to the fullest on hardships but weach blows their theories away he had one of the most grueling jobs imaginable he lost a son instead of being bitter he loved his family his life and his surroundings all the more in his retirement years he extended that love to his community with his skating rink maybe that s why march makes me think of him so much it is the time of year when gentle warmth begins to steal over cold barren landscapes it is a time of hope and happiness i miss you uncle weach you didn t need to look like reagan to be an american icon posted in childhood memories family memoirs tagged cheat river childhood memories family great uncle memoirs preston county tunnelton uncle uncle weach wade ruggles west virginia 7 comments pet names posted on march 8 2013 by hawleywood40 do i look like a mosquito to you whatcha want skeeter i called across the room the other night using the voice i reserve for baby talking to my cat he d been meowing at me while i tried to check my email sylvester stretched and looked at me like i d grown a second head then he gave a disgusted flick of his tail and stalked off into the kitchen the food bowl wasn t empty just dangerously low by his standards i refilled it and said there you go fat boy he tossed another disgusted look over his shoulder then stuck his face in the bowl i guess i can t blame him in less than five minutes i d called him both skeeter and fat boy those are just a few of the monikers that get tossed his way several times a day his actual name sylvester is the one i use least of all fat boy makes sense all you have to do is look at him or witness his paranoid obsession with his food bowl to understand it but skeeter that one is a little more roundabout a long while back lee and i discovered google translate we are fortysomethings in pre teen bodies i guess because this helpful tool immediately became a source of juvenile entertainment we spent more time than i care to admit looking up cursewords and vulgar slang in different languages one that stuck with us was muschi for those who don t know this is how you say pussy in german at least according to the almighty google translator i decided it was kind of a cute word i dislike the p word and am even less fond of the good old c word that rhymes with runt they ve got a harsh icky grossness to them muschi on the other hand is almost cute ish at least the way we say it moo ski it sounds like a cartoon cow with a polish last name people who actually speak german might pronounce it very differently but at our juvenile google translate party for two that didn t matter all poor sylvester it was only a matter of time before pussycat became mooskicat which became just plain old mooski and then one day he was being a royal pain in the arse when i was trying to read insisting that i pay attention to him by sticking his butt in my face moo ski toe i admonished you know mooskito mosquito because mosquitoes are a pain in the ass and so are cats who shove that same body part in your face fat boy mooski mooskito it wasn t much more of a stretch to get to skeeter what is it about our animal companions that makes rational normal human beings come up with idiotic pet names for that matter what makes us do the same with people if i think about it i was genetically predestined for this brand of weirdness as a kid i spent several weeks of each summer vacation with my great aunt and great uncles in west virginia i d come home anxious to tell my neighborhood friends about my trip aunt fuzzy took me to her campsite we had fires at night and told ghost stories and put whoopie cushions in uncle don s chair so we could say he farted then i stayed with uncle weach and we fished in his pond and went roller skating when i stayed with uncle bunny he had me and my cousins weed all the cornfields and taught me how to milk a cow and we walked over to uncle hop s and picked blackberries my friends would give me the same you have an extra head look i get from sylvester when i call him skeeter back then i figured they thought my cow milking corn weeding vacation paled in comparison to their trip to disney world although i wouldn t have traded with them for anything now i realize it probably wasn t my trip itself but my fuzzyweachbunnyhop collection of aunts and uncles that caught them off guard fuzzy was actually alma weach was wade bunny was hugh and hop was frank but they d gone by their childhood nicknames for so long that they d been fuzzyweachbunnyhop for decades before i came along why change now my dad called me thumper when i was a kid it had nothing to do with the adorable little rabbit from bambi it was his way of making fun of the way i stomped around everywhere i was not a graceful child again some things never change my sister had it worse my mother called her toad and so did i i m thankful that unlike our great aunt and great uncles we let our childhood nicknames drift away going through life as thumper and toad would have sucked what silly ok maybe even stupid nicknames have been bestowed on you your loved ones or your pets even better what s the story behind them posted in childhood memories family humor memoirs pets slices o life uncategorized tagged cat cats childhood nicknames family humor memories pet names pets sylvester 13 comments gettin dirty posted on march 4 2013 by hawleywood40 i ve been overcome with a desire to play in the dirt i want to sit in the grass with morning dew soaking my butt i want to weed my gardens i wasn t much of a gardener until i hit my mid thirties i admired others landscaping and colorful flower beds and always appreciated my mom making her yard a poolside paradise but i never caught the gardening bug myself it was all i could do to keep the grass mowed and weeds and vines from overtaking my yard when i met lee that all changed he d always loved gardening but had never lived in a place that offered much space for it he saw my yard the way a painter sees a blank canvas even before we moved in together i let him have at it early on it our relationship i worked days and he worked nights the only time our schedules meshed was sundays often he d come over and spend the whole day playing in my yard turning it into something beautiful it didn t take long to get me out there planting and weeding with him to my surprise i discovered that i loved the whole experience down to the dirt under my fingernails and the mud stains on my bum even so i m amazed at how psyched i am for gardening season i m not a winter hater the cold keeps me indoors more but it also seems to refuel my creative well i write more in the fall and winter months than i ever do in spring or summer knowing that i rarely wish them away i m blaming my eagerness to put winter behind me on two things the first is that maryland s winter has chomped a hairy butt this year it hasn t been brutal just a constant roller coaster of almost springlike days followed by cold temps and wild winds each changeover brings a spattering of rain and some sad slushy snow with no lasting snowstorms to turn the landscape into a fresh clean wonderland and get me a home from work free card or two i m just done with it i m done with slippery roads and the wind making it sound like some serial killing psychopath is banging on my door at 2 a m but even more than that i think my eagerness for dirt digging is about relief at work i m in the midst of a project that involves reviewing tons of records and statistics in a pai...