Jul 10
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
The apartment was uncharacteristically silent for a Tuesday night. The usual strains of jazz that normally helped Timothy McGee concentrate were no longer floating around the apartment and annoying his neighbors.
His editor had sent the latest Deep Six novel back to him with notes about the things she wanted changed. Although Tim felt slightly miffed at this apparent challenge to his own work, he knew he was only human and capable of mistakes. Like typos. And sometimes his grammar looked worse than his sister's.
He worked slowly and diligently, needing the silence to allow him to focus and work out how to reword a section or add a little more detail in a description. And there were some inconsistencies as well – good on Lydia or whoever she'd got to go over this for spotting he'd previously described Penny Leopard's hair as red, whereas now he'd called it practically blonde in certain lights. If he didn't mention hair dye somewhere, his fans would go crazy.
Staring at one particular passage, he winced at the reading. On the surface, he got the message across. But there were far too many commas and he could do with a cull. Hmm, which ones could he remove without losing the meaning?
One. Two.
No, he needed the second one.
He flipped the proof over and started studying the next one. This was going to take a while.