III. On Cars, Highways, and Literary Self-Criticism

Saturday, June 23 9:04pm

The answer to “Are we there yet?” is always No. Because if we are there, everyone is either too excited or too tired to ask. Or, in my case, too busy screaming We’re Lost because the Holiday Inn in Harrisonburg, Virginia fails to indicate (at least, transparently enough for my flustered sister after she’s been driving for nine hours) that it shares a hidden-driveway-parallel-to-the-highway with the adjacent Comfort Inn. See, the GPS (with whom we have a love-hate relationship) is always technically right but never tells you that the U-turn you’re supposed to make is in fact a substantially Larger U-turn. In my case, I’m sick of the car and glad to be rid of it.

I spent part of my nine hours reading over “Why I Won’t Describe Me” and realized that it is, in fact, a massive rant with no focus and a crappy conclusion. This is due to the fact that we stopped at McDonald’s somewhere in Jersey and, lest my family discover that this is not in fact a fiction novel, (and therefore discover I’ve been talking about them within it) I had to be quick about it. The lack of focus, alas, has no excuse. Does it mean anything to apologize for low-quality literature?

Says the little-devil’s-advocate within me: To apologize for low-quality literature is to edit the low-quality literature.

Me: (mumbling about the vitality of a first draft)

L.-D.-A.: You’re being lazy.

Me: If I get locked up in editing I’ll never finish writing the piece.

L.-D.-A.: (expletive censorable as “horse manure”)

Me: So what do you want me to do?

Lest I segue into a one-sided argument with myself, suffice it to say that if Entry II has more than one paragraph by the time you read it online, I edited it. As of right now it consists of a page and a half of uninterrupted rambling.

So does this one.

Damn.