THE JOY OF EDITING

Just now, I've been doing a little impromptu editing of my (completed) novel, THAT'S SHOW BIZ! after finding some in-progress notes. The original paragraph:

"At the other end of the room, Pa Flannery chopped away at a side of meat with a cleaver almost as big as he was. He was in his early forties, skinny, with a squirrelish, eager look. His apron was spotted with caked blood, and he wore the kind of beat up straw hat butchers wear in advertisements. The thick lenses of his glasses completely obscured his eyes. His teeth were noticeably immaculate. They didn’t match the rest of him."

Looking it over, I did a bit of revising:

"At the other end of the room, Pa Flannery chopped away at a side of meat with a cleaver almost as big as he was. He was a skinny man in his early forties. His eyes were completely obscured by the thick lenses of his glasses, and his eager, darting movements made him seem not unlike a mole scraping away at the earth. His apron was spotted with caked blood, and he wore a beat up straw hat butchers usually wear in advertisements. His teeth were ivory white and immaculate. They didn’t match the rest of him."

Then the final (presently):

"At the other end of the room, Pa Flannery quietly chipped away at a hunk of meat with a cleaver almost as big as he was. He was a skinny man in his early forties. His eyes were completely obscured by the thick lenses of his glasses, and his eager, darting movements made him seem not unlike a mole scraping away at the earth. He sported a beat up straw hat butchers usually wore only in advertisements, and his apron was spotted with caked blood. But his teeth were an immaculate ivory white. They didn’t match the rest of him."

I'm most pleased with the last version because, fortuitously, I introduced a simile (chipping away at meat & obscured eyes=a mole scraping at the earth), and a contrast ("sporting" a shoddy hat and bloody apron, but having immaculate teeth). And you saw it as it happened! That's right, all one of me.

COPYRIGHT 2016 BY MILTON KNIGHT