Party lines

Writing for publication I sometimes feel as if I'm a character in an epistolary novel.  My manuscript goes out, crisp and clean on my screen, and returns speckled with conversational balloons.  "Is this what you meant?"  "Could you shorten/expand/clarify this?" "Rephrase, please." I respond, "No, no, not at all." "Yes." "Of course."  When we run out of conversation, it goes to print.

Crossing conversations are challenging. Facing the piece that came back in the fall with multiple editors in conversation with each other and with me in the margins was like doing battle with an octopus, it tentacles wrapped around my prose, prising one free only to find two more clinging to a paragraph.  This week the cross talk consisted of not one, not two, not three...ok, lots of...pieces that had been consigned to editorial hands returning.  Science. Not science. Short.  Long. And the book, the book came back, too.

It's a cocktail party in my computer.