Exercise: rewriting lean and mean?

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Just in case you want to try it, here is Nancy Kress's sample paragraph. Go ahead and try rewriting it, remembering her advice about strong verbs, precise nouns, light on the modifiers, controlled pronouns, careful conjunctions, adjusting the prepositions, and the proper use of interjections. A little later this week, I'll send out her corrected version so that you can see one example of editing lean and mean.

Jane walked with awkward slowness into her lavatory and put cold water on her eyes. She was tired and had drunk too much the night before. Barry had been buying her drinks and wouldn't take no for an answer. Jane looked at herself and, pretty upset, closed her eyes from the mirror. She looked and felt terrible. Maybe she should take something to help, but she didn't think it would. "Rats," she said dispiritedly.

Poor Jane. But you can do something to help! You can make her paragraph sing. Go ahead, you know you want to rewrite it.

EXERCISE: A Stitch where?

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An exercise for the fun of it. Here's the basic notion. As you are aware, there are various sayings, clichés, quotations, etc. that bounce around in our little noggins. For example, "a stitch in time . . ." well, you know how that ends, right?

So what do you do with something like this? You might start by thinking about its background. What could this phrase mean? In the case of the stitching, I suspect it points to the desirability of early repairs. When a shirt or something starts to tear, stopping the tear with a single stitch can avoid having to put in multiple stitches late. So fixing something at the first sign of a problem avoids the growth of the problem, requiring extensive renovations and resources at a later date. Or, as the saying goes, "a stitch in time saves nine."

One of the modern games to play with phrases is to toss it into a search engine. See what Google has to say about "a stitch in time saves nine." Idioms, proverbs, the New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy - and there's a cross-reference to "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Plenty of fun and games to mix in.

Another approach is to consider some slightly variant readings. A science fiction fan might wonder about a literal stitch in time, connecting this point in space-time with that point in space-time. Or what about the stitch in your side? How could that change things? Of course you can add various possibilities for the nine. What items does the nine refer to? And how does a stitch in time saves nine iPods, anyway? Or the  inevitable misreading - a snitch in time? A scritch in rhyme? Saves mine? Go ahead, let the word warp and see what you find.

Finally, of course, we might consider using this as a bit of story bait. The theme of the story might very well focus on the saying (or perhaps one of those variants you were playing with?). Or perhaps the story focuses on what happens when people ignore the saying. After all, if you don't make stitches in time, you'll need nine!

So - go to your nearest proverb collection, quote site, or whatever. Or just pull one out of your head. And then consider the background (you can even look it up if you want to), check out the search engine threads, let your synapses fold, spindle, and mutilate the phrase of your choice, and last but not least, consider using it for a story seed.

And you were going to be bored!

Exercise: rewriting lean and mean?

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Here is Nancy Kress's revised version. What do you think? How did you revise it?

Jane staggered into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her eyes. Last night, Barry had insisted on buying her martinis -- way too many martinis. Appalled, Jane peered into the mirror. Blood-shot eyes, pasty skin -- she looked like a burned-over forest. Maybe she should take something. Aspirin? Valium? Cyanide? Nothing would help this. "Oh, shit."

There you go!

So what happens next with Jane and Barry, anyway?