Book #42: In the Waiting Room

"I can't imagine anyone becoming a writer who wasn't a voracious reader as an adolescent.  A true reader understands that books are a world unto themselves - and that that world is richer and more interesting than any one we've traveled in before."
                                                          -Paul Auster, The Paris Review Interviews, Volume IV

Revising my book has been a curious activity.  It's a bit like looking in the mirror and trying to remember how I looked a year and a half ago (when I first began writing my memoir) or better still, three years ago (when I was still trapped in the dreary life of an English professor and having a meltdown in tandem with my father's - our twin breakdowns forming the subject matter of my three hundred pages).  But now, as I look back on that time in my life, I feel weirdly distant from the neurotic, panic-stricken woman I was back then (well, still a little neurotic, I guess).  Such is the editing process.

My publisher's main criticism was that in certain sections, she wanted "more Leslie."  In a few areas, she feels the prose is still a bit too intellectual (the very mousy self I'd come to loathe!)  So that's what I've been working on for the past two weeks - injecting more of my authentic, unfiltered voice.  And the experience has been therapeutic, to say the least.

There's also been a certain amount of traipsing around the city involved in the final stretch of writing my book.  One of the scenes I was reworking is set in the hospital waiting room where I sat for so many hours as a young teenager, chewing my fingernails and awaiting the next round of medieval treatments in store for my scoliosis.  Reading over the scene, I was suddenly overwhelmed by this fear that I'd described the waiting room all wrong - that wasn't at all how I remembered the plastic benches and hyper sanitized surfaces and lame murals of dragons and rainbows.  The feeling lingered, sharp and disorienting, and later that day I couldn't resist my desire to return to that very place, that very waiting room.  I wanted to examine the tiles and breathe the vaguely sweet, antiseptic air and search - once again - for vestiges of my old self.  But it was the end of the day, and the waiting room was completely empty.   

Still, it was oddly moving to be back there and I found myself wandering around the ortho ward for some time.  I paused outside an exam room where I caught a glimpse of a surly, stringy haired girl slouching down in her chair, her arms crossed like her stomach hurt, while a white-haired doctor prattled on.  Ah, yes.  I had her number.  I stood in the shadows of the door, mesmerized. 

It must have been around that time in my life that I turned to the solitary, inward compensations of reading.

Photo from: here

Book #39: Looking for Diversions

"I often fell asleep on top of my manuscript, then woke with a swollen cheek.  Sometimes, when the wall clock's silver hands pointed past twelve, I would imagine I was hearing things.  Those sounds would recur, like the snoring of the electrical repairman next door, the boom of a crane on a far-off building site in the dead of night, or the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen." 
                                                                                                     -Wei Hui, Shanghai Baby
 
After a three day stretch of living in my pajamas, I finished writing the last chapter of my book yesterday.  I stole one of my boyfriend's cigarettes to celebrate and huddled in my bathrobe on our snow-crusted patio overlooking the park, a cold lucidity filling my lungs.

I wanted to feel tranquil and savour the moment, but just the opposite was so.  Editing.  Ugh.  I have one week to edit the manuscript as a whole before turning it over to my editor for her final comments and revisions.

I realized this morning that I definitely prefer writing to editing.  There's something so much more satisfying about putting pen to paper and forming words afresh compared to cutting and moving stuff around.  A few hours of editing simply doesn't make me feel like I've had my dose of writing for the day. 

Seeking some diversion from the task at hand, I picked up Shanghai Baby, which I've been reading intermittently over the past couple weeks, and found myself suddenly engrossed in the final chapters.  It's an autobiographical novel by Wei Hui, a young Shanhainese writer who lives a madcap, near schizophrenic life - caught between waxing lyrical about Henry Miller and Marguerite Duras and lusting after the latest Yves Saint-Laurent wallet.  While writing and secluding herself with her own thoughts - some of which are surprisingly beautiful reflections on the ephemeral quality of twenty-first-century life - she also finds time to engage in games of love and deceit at Shanghai's hot night spots, bringing into focus a city made for film noir, full of old world glamour, decrepit architecture, fast money.  My favourite scenes are almost reminiscent of the films of Wong Kar Wai (speaking of whom I may watch Fallen Angels tonight to reward myself for making some headway with this editing business).

Photo from: here