Keep the Distance
a series of revisions and reflections -- I
I mentioned dusting off and opening my old Google Docs account a few posts back. I’ve been combing through it to find what I liked and what I hated from before. I’m truly clinging to anything that will give me some inspiration as I try to write again, and who better to look toward than nineteen-year-old me.
My creative writing professors always talked about rewriting, and creating distance, and coming back with fresh eyes, and tweaking a piece more, and then changing forms and then creating even more distance, blah blah blah… rinsing and repeating this process until you have something great.
In my mind, this translated to, “You’ll finally be a great writer in ten years when the shit you’re writing now looks completely different! Best of luck!” God forbid you’re small and naïve and want to be great now.
I loved and hated this kind of revision process previously. I hated that it was long and grueling and didn’t feed my necessity for immediate gratification. What do you mean I can’t build Rome in a day? I didn’t want to be patient. I wanted a fully polished, submittable, collection now.
I loved it because deep down I knew, in most ways, patience and new perspective does nourish creative work.
After taking a major writing hiatus, it’s time to do the rewriting, the tweaking, the studying.
I wrote this piece for my Intro to Creative Nonfiction class in the spring of 2023. I didn’t quite know what I would write about in this class, but I was happy to stay away from true fiction. I was scared I wouldn’t have any ideas. I also hate writing dialogue. There’s a way to do fiction without it, but I knew I’d be forced to at some point for the sake of the class. Part of me wishes I had taken a fiction class or two in college now, but at the time I didn’t believe I had the mental capacity for it. I digress.
One thing I will credit my Creative Nonfiction classes with is their ability to teach you how to pay attention. At first I was just making something out of nothing, but then I started really focusing on my surroundings. It was therapeutic in a way. I needed content, so I needed to look around.
I started to notice patterns in my life, things that were timely and reliable to study.
I was always stopped by the school bus on my way home from work when I had the mid-shift. I remember seeing a girl with a Bluey backpack about a week after I had moved in. By the time spring rolled around, she was taller, wearing bright eyeshadow, and had replaced it with a green Jansport backpack.
It made me sad, seeing her grow out of the Bluey backpack. I wanted to tell her it was cool enough to keep, that she’s still a kid. I wondered if it was her decision to make the switch or if someone at school had said something.
It haunted me.
The haunting sparked an idea for this short piece from my Creative Nonfiction Final Collection, A Toast to Home, written about my first apartment.
Racing
On the days that my shift ends at three, I arrive at my apartment complex at the same time that the local school bus does. I’ve watched as the kids grow each week, seeing some familiar faces and waving to their parents often. They’ve shot up like the longleaf pines that reside next to me.
The bus driver always slams on the breaks when he arrives. Each time it appears that he’ll miss the stop but he never does. Some days the sun hits the school bus windows just right and acts as the perfect backlight, allowing me to see tiny heads flinging up, forward, then down. The children hesitantly rest back into their seats. If I could see their faces there might be an eye roll or two. I wonder if the stop wakes some of them. I doubt it, but a part of me hopes that kids aren’t afraid to fall asleep on the bus anymore.
Sometimes, only sometimes, afternoon rain sprinkles down from the sky in a springtime haze as the double doors open. Today is one of those days. Even with my windows up and my left blinker booming in my ears (click-click, pause, click-click) I hear their squeals. It’s a quick escalation. Hesitancy, then rush. Quiet then sound. They’re finally home. From taps to thuds, feet pitter patter on the floor. Parents wave children down from underneath umbrellas or overhangs, all afraid of the springtime sparkles, blocking the magic from falling on their faces and trickling onto wrinkled necks.
The starter pistol goes off, glass moves to the side. Ready, set, go. The children emerge quickly. Hair wet, clothing sticking to sides and legs, some run without fear and without aim. The sandal wearers appear filled with regret. The slippery soled kids are careful at first but eventually throw caution to the wind, sprinting forward. Crocs swallow the puddles, splashes fly up and out as they run. Some run with backpacks and lunchboxes held over their heads, inhibitions released, unphased by the soggy homework in their bags that their mom will later dry with a hairdryer. Maybe the papers will be hung up to dry alongside said backpacks and lunchboxes. They run with pride, direction. The perfect puddle to be splashed lies ahead, and they see it. They run to it. They pretend. Their stomps create tsunamis for ants.
Endorphins rushing and too-young-to-be-worn makeup smudging, I want to run alongside them again.
With this series, the goal is to revise and rewrite a bit. One of my professors always advised us against posting anything we wanted to publish, so I’m kind of using this as a writing graveyard. Anything that doesn’t feel good enough to submit will go here. If I do submit it, putting it here forces me to make it completely new in my revisions.
It’ll be a good experiment for me and force me to look at what I’d written before in hopes of rewriting now. Making these public hold me accountable.
I honestly don’t hate this one. There are places that feel polished to me and images I will admit to liking. I like how I depicted the movement when a driver hits the brakes. I love the way the rest of the excerpt captures the sense of stop-and-go with the short sentences and pauses. Maybe next time I’d break it up differently. I don’t love the structure.
I do hate the name, but I feel like that will be a future decision for whatever this concept ends up becoming. I hate the longleaf pines line. I’d probably scratch that. I think the whole thing could be more fleshed out. There’s no real “why” here, just an image I liked. It feels more prose-y than anything. I think that’s the category I’d place it in now.
While I don’t want to go into huge revision detail with this one, I do want to show the different forms this piece had taken throughout my time in school. I will say I used the recycling method in hopes of speeding up the time it took to make something good.
Outside of class, I experimented with making it into a poem a couple times. I think there was a lot of opportunity for fun sounds and a bit more of a fleshed out image if it were to become a poem again... I honestly don’t think I did enough in the one I’m about to share. It feels quick and exudes a lack of effort. If it became a longer piece, it could have been nice as a scene to piece in somewhere. I’d love to do this at some point, but for now I’ll share the premature rewriting I did.
Racing - Poem I
Creaking, squeaking,
hot orange metal slams to a stop.
A bus full of children arrive home, awoken,
by the halt
the bounce up, forward,
down.
Spring rain trickles down
onto smooth faces
or backpacks lifted above heads.
Papers are soaked and giggles erupt.
Alive,
yelling,
I want to go back in time
to run alongside them.
Racing - Poem II
When I pull into my apartment complex and see children running from the bus stop with
backpacks and lunchboxes and zip-ups held over their heads as protection from the rain
I remember being unaware of my face
feeling the rain trickle from brow
to the lump on my nose
into my mouth,
unaware that living in this body means more than shielding it from the rain and running.
I find these so interesting. I’d argue that I like Poem II more, but Poem I utilizes the images and sounds I love so much looking back. I’m not in love with either, but I do like the way they’re so different.
Poem I really attempts to mirror the prose piece. It has the same word choice, there are short sounds, I keep the motion as the driving force of the poem. The stop-and-go is there just like before. I love the “hot orange metal” line in retrospect… mostly because it was supposed to hint at the school bus being dirty or old to contrast with the kids. Also mostly because it really just seems like I don’t know what color a school bus is.
I remember writing Poem II as more of a perspective on girlhood, specifically leaning into experiencing a standard of beauty as you grow older, drawing from the “too-young-to-be-worn makeup smudging” line in the original prose piece. The whole poem is focused more on image, so I remember wanting the structure to have an image too. The shape of the overhang was intentional, mimicking the overhang that parents stood under waiting for their children, but I remember showing this to one of my professors and him not seeing it. Needless to say, this wasn’t submitted in that class.
I think it’s important to look back and laugh a little. Looking at my expired work has done that for me. Maybe revisions are better when you’ve created distance because it’s a bit easier to laugh. Maybe I’ll learn to love the distance.
love when the mobile preview has my poem in the right format but the published one is messed up… ignore that