I’ve heard (and read) many writing pros who say “writing is editing.”
This piece by Meaghan O’Connell in The Cut vividly brings the concept of multiple revisions to life. Here’s a quick excerpt:
Imagine taking the very sharpest thought you had each day for two years and then adding it to a pile. If someone walked by and looked at your pile of best thoughts, they’d think you were a genius. They might see your thoughts and feel things. It might be an encounter with the sublime. This is the promise of revision and the good news. The bad news is that to get there, you have to start by rereading your own work.
I totally understand what she’s saying, and have no doubt that all great writing has been reviewed and revised to achieve that greatness.
On the other hand, I’m a bit of a Seth Godin disciple, and he’s a big fan of “ship your work.” If you keep waiting (and editing) for your words to be perfect, you’ll never actually deliver a finished piece. (Seth’s “one blog post a day for a week” challenge a few years ago was the kick in the trousers I needed to actually start “shipping” some writing of my own, after having set up a WordPress blog a couple of years earlier and then being afraid to actually post anything.)
The two concepts — polished prose and printed pieces — aren’t mutually exclusive. But I think too many aspiring writers spend way too much time agonizing over the edits, and not enough time “shipping” more of their work out into the world. Writing is tough enough as it is… if you ponder the multiple rounds of edits that await you after your “shitty first draft” (as Anne Lamott calls it), you may find the process even more daunting, and you might never put pen to paper.
I understand and respect the editing process… in fact, I love it. But this is a tiny little speck of a blog, it ain’t no Great American Novel. (It ain’t even grammatically correct sometimes.) I’d rather err on the side of “done” — and I do think that shipping a greater quantity has actually helped improve the quality over the years as well. [You, faithful reader (singular), may beg to differ.]
In other words, if you came looking for the “pile of great thoughts” that Ms. O’Connell mentions, you’ll be sorely disappointed. But if you’re OK with a pile of… er, stuff… then this is just the blog for you!
Your thought for the day… nay, thought for a lifetime for any parent, comes from cellist, composer, and conductor, Pablo Casals:
“Each second we live in a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and will never be again. And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all of the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another child like you… You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is like you, a marvel? You must cherish one another. You must work—we must all work—to make this world worthy of its children.”
In Arkansas, the state where I grew up, they’re big on killing birds. Tyson Corporation, based in Springdale, AR, is the country’s top poultry processor, and Mountaire Farms Inc. (HQ in Little Rock) is the 6th largest. This article in The New Yorker is a fascinating read about Mountaire, its reclusive, arch-conservative owner, and the chicken industry in general.
Working in a chicken processing plant is one of the most hazardous jobs around, and the “reward” for taking on that risk is pay that’s 44% below the national average for manufacturing jobs. Oh, and it’s even more hazardous during the pandemic… but companies like Tyson and Mountaire convinced Trump to issue an executive order to keep those processing plants running (even though many had experienced coronavirus outbreaks… and they were still exporting plenty of dead birds to other countries). Not only that, but these corporations now have a free pass to speed up the processing line… from 140 B.P.M. (that’s birds per minute – ponder that for a moment) to 175 B.P.M. As a union rep says in the article, “It’s like the ‘I Love Lucy’ episode at the chocolate factory.” And they don’t even have to report their COVID-19 numbers.
Mountaire made $1 billion more in revenue in 2019 than it did in 2010. Rest assured the profits aren’t trickling down to the workers, the vast majority of whom are minorities, including a lot of recent immigrants. Instead, Mountaire’s owner Ronnie Cameron is shoveling millions to Trump, other Republican candidates, and ultra-conservative causes.
In 2004, he set up a private foundation, the Jesus Fund. Given the poverty of many Mountaire workers, the size of the fund is striking: according to the most recently available federal tax statement, the book value of the Jesus Fund’s assets in 2018 was three hundred and twenty-seven million dollars. The sole donors were Cameron and his company.
From The New Yorker article cited above
I guess Ronnie’s foundation missed this nugget from Jesus:
Yes, I know it’s his money and he can do whatever he pleases with it. But there’s more than chicken blood on his hands.
“It matters how he treats his workers, because he’s making money off the backs of these people and is donating it to Christian causes—so there’s a moral connection.”
Warren Throckmorton, an evangelical Christian and a psychology professor at Grove City College, as quoted in The New Yorker article.
If companies cared as much about their workers as they do about their chickens, we’d be a better country.”
David Michaels, a professor of public health at George Washington University, who headed OSHA during the Obama Administration
Meanwhile, a couple of lawsuits against 10 or more of the largest poultry companies allege that they conspired to hold down workers’ wages and to fix prices. Not surprising when you consider that the top 10 poultry companies control about 80% of the market.
At present, Mountaire is trying to bust the union at their Delaware plant. Check out this paragraph from the article:
The gulf between Cameron’s spectacular wealth and his workers’ meagre circumstances echoes the findings of a recent study by two Harvard economists, Anna Stansbury and Lawrence H. Summers, the former economic adviser to President Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama. In the paper, “The Declining Worker Power Hypothesis,” Stansbury and Summers argue that, in the past four decades, the single largest driver of income inequality in America has been the decline in worker power, much of it stemming from the collapse of membership in private-sector unions. Since the fifties, the percentage of private-sector workers who belong to unions has declined from thirty-three per cent to six per cent. As a result, there has been an upward redistribution of income to high-income executives, owners, and shareholders. The economists argue that this decline in worker power, more than any other structural change in the economy, accounts for nearly all the gains in the share of income made by America’s wealthiest one per cent.
I’ve been a vegetarian for 30 years, but I’ve bought plenty of “cheap” chicken to feed my kids. Now I have a better understanding of the true costs. And a better idea of how that paradigm can change.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
I totally understand what he’s saying… especially when I go kayaking on the Little Miami River, as I did yesterday morning. I’ve paddled it many times, going upriver for as long as my arms can stand it, and then floating back to my launch point at Otto Armleder Park. Each time, the river IS different – rain (or lack thereof), fallen trees and the constant current reshape it, creating new pools and riffles (they’re way too tame to be called rapids).
And if I’m not a different dude each time I first step into the river, I’m definitely a changed man within seconds. Somehow the current manages to wash away my worries, and I’m more attuned to the sights and sounds around me. I can always count on seeing a grey heron or three, but yesterday there was an entire flock of Canada Geese along the shoreline. I passed three middle-aged couples paddling ~7 miles down to the Ohio River. I saw someone fly fishing – he and his travel companion (still sleeping in his/her tree hammock) had paddled downriver and camped overnight. And I had plenty of alone time to ponder the mysteries of life.
The river is different. I’m different. But the positive feeling I get? That’s the same as it ever was.
On Friday, March 13th, the office where I usually toil (using that term very loosely) sent everyone home due to the pandemic. I’ve been a basement businessperson ever since. There are pluses and minuses, but one huge plus is Casual Monday-Friday.
I’ve worn long pants a grand total of about 5 hours in the past 4 months. Once was for my wife’s niece’s outdoor wedding.
(I changed into shorts for the reception….)
Yesterday, the long pants were for a funeral. My friend John’s father passed away last weekend. John gave the eulogy, and it was beautiful, because it was all about gratitude. Gratitude that his dad’s battle with kidney cancer was brief and not too painful. Gratitude for the hospice workers, the hospital caregivers, the senior living center where his parents spent the final chapter of their lives after moving to Cincinnati 9 years ago (John’s mom passed a year and a half ago). He was also grateful that his kids were understanding when he had to leave a family event early to tend to his parents’ needs. Grateful for his wife’s kindness and patience over the past decade.
All of the reasons really resonated, but especially the last one. It’s one thing for a son or daughter to serve as a “first responder” for an aging parent… but if that person is married, their spouse “inherits” a lot of the duties as well — helping out and/or picking up the slack at home when their partner is dealing with his/her parents.
For the final decade and a half of his life, my dad lived with my older sister and her husband and their three kids in a Brooklyn brownstone. It was a bit like The King of Queens, minus the laugh track.
My sister surely deserves sainthood for dealing with Dad’s literal and figurative baggage, but I should never forget that my brother-in-law was a big part of that equation too. For him, and countless others who are part of the “sandwich generation,” the “happily ever after” of marriage will likely involve a lot of sacrifice on behalf of their senior in-laws.
I’m grateful for my brother-in-law’s kindness and patience. And I’m grateful that my friend John reminded me about it. It was worth the long pants.
Kevin Sullivan on Life advice from a man who lived it: “A good one Damian. Bring our lens into focus after the long weekend or our long life journey.” Jul 7, 09:38
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