For the last six months, the state road that leads to my house has been undergoing a vast widening project. The stretch closest to me is now in the grading stage, I discovered when I left to go to the Post Office this morning. As far as the eye could see, the landscape was littered with orange cones, detour signs, mounds of gravel, parked trucks. All so that a single guy could ride back and forth in a small truck pushing a big roller, doing something that seems to have no visible effect at all.
And then I thought: isn't that the pot calling the kettle black (as my grandmother used to say).
A big mess. A long time. A solitary person. The seemingly endless task of leveling. And smoothing. And packing. And balancing. And smoothing again, all to make changes so subtle than no ordinary human can see the difference.
Welcome to the Working Writer's world.
If our work as writers was visible, I suspect it would look just like this kind of road project. No "normal" person, no non-writer, would understand the minute revisions we so often find ourselves engaged in, or the seemingly endless time that they seem to take. But we know that this work is not just necessary but foundational. If we don't get it right, the visible parts of our book or poem, story or essay, just won't work. And if we don't get it right now, it will be much messier--or even impossible--to fix it later, when everything is set in stone. Or in asphalt, as the case may be.
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