Last Chance

Dear devoted Readers,

In my mercy (or maliciousness), I have decided to extend the contest deadline for one more day. So get off your duff, think for five whole seconds, and write your entry. Perhaps this equation will help you decide:


As you can see, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Revisions, Round 1

[ note for those who use Google Reader or some other RSS feed aggregator to read this blog: this post was written to include pop-up notes throughout the text, but unfortunately your reader cannot display these properly. I recommend going to the source to read this one, but if you can't be bothered, just know that the notes that normally wouldn't appear until you hovered over the asterisks are in plain sight here, probably in bright blue text. I here I thought Google could do everything. ]

My roommate Dave and I stayed up late batting ideas back and forth and arguing about what this essay is really about. It was terribly fun. He sat in his grandfather's easy chair, and I sat in my Salvation Army barcalounger. He pointed out things he really liked, and I graciously accepted the compliments. Then I pointed out things I really liked and demanded more compliments. Then we got to the business of improving the essay rather than my ego.

What follows is a marked-up copy of what we did so you can see how the piece is progressing. Deletions are struck out, and alterations are in red. I've also added some commentary to show what we were thinking when we made certain changes. I've marked these as green bracketed asterisks in the text, like this: { * }Boo! . To read the comment, just hover the mouse over the asterisk and it should pop up right there.

I'd also like to thank Dave for his honest criticism and his very valuable suggestions. No writing happens in a vacuum, and no piece ever really has just one author. So here it is:

Stars, Doubts, Girls
Sing, Dear Gemini

The other day Ash, Jake, Joey Steve, and I were dinking around the office talking, when someone brought up the idea of dating people with your same birthday. On the one hand, it was suggested, it could be neat and really, really convenient (as far as remembering one more important date memory goes¹). But On the other hand, pointed out Ash, it might be dangerous, a form of "cosmological incest."

{ * }We just trimmed this for readability and correctness (Thanks, Steve, for setting me straight on the facts).

As the only one in the room that had actually pulled this off, I can say it does with any experience in this area, I assured them it did have a certain creepiness to it. I once dated a girl exactly one year younger than me, and it was weird, but not in the way you might think. The thing was that we had way more in common than just our birthday.

For one, we met at a concert. A concert we were both performing in. I was standing in the wings after performing my song for the BYU Guitars Unplugged concert a few years ago when I noticed that the girl presently performing on stage was pretty good. I mean, I don't want to rag on girls or anything, but the truth is that it's kinda rare to meet a guitar-playing girl who actually has good technique, good rhythm, and a good voice. And good song-writing skills.² She had red hair, and this pink light was shining down on her like magic, making her all strawberries-and-cream.

{ * }Again, we're really just editing for smoothness here, cutting out anything extraneous and avoiding repeating words if possible.

Which brings me to the next thing we had in common: good looks.

Tom and I tearing it up at the concert.
You can't tell, but under my jeans my left leg
is in a splint since I had torn my ACL skiing
just a week or so before this.

Anyway, my brother got her number for me³ since he worked at the same place as her, and we went out a few times. I remember we went on a walk once early on and we were asking each other questions—you know those first-date-ish questions like "What's your favorite ____?" or "If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?"—well, I'd ask her one of those and silently be thinking up my own answer, and then she'd say exactly what I was thinking. It was weird. I asked her when her birthday was, and when she said, "June 11," I died. It was like I was falling in love with myself; it felt so wrong—but I was so attractive.

We sat in my living room and sang "Somethin' Stupid," crowding together around a sheet of lyrics as I shuffled out the chords on my guitar. She fell into the harmonies so naturally as to melt my bones.

{ * }I'm still not satisfied with the phrase "shuffled out the chords." I want to describe the rhythm and the sound just right—that latinish one trip-e-let and three and four grooviness that the guitar does. Does anyone know what that's called? Is it a cha-cha or something? There's the same groove in the Eagles' songs "Tequila Sunrise" and "New Kid in Town." It makes me think of being thirsty in a Mexican cantina somewhere.

Sometime midweek I realized that her initials were S. G. My initials, not counting my middle name, are S. G. Walking to pick her up for our next date, I reeled off D-names in my mind: Danielle, Darcy, Daphne, Deborah, Diane, Dawn, Dorothy, Drew. SDG: Stephen David Grover. SDG: Super Dateable Girl. June 11, 1981. June 11, 1982. SDG: Sensible Days Gone. June 11. June 11.

{ * }Here's where we started tweaking things for real. Notice that we moved the SDG phrases around to play with the dramatic pacing of this section. Doing this had another effect as well: it help define the meaning of each of these phrases more clearly. Dave really liked the SDGs, but in the cases of "Sense of Doom Growing" and "Sudden Death, Grover," he felt it was unclear exactly what I was anxious about.

SDG: Sensible days gone.

Sudden Death, Grover.

Sense of Doom Growing.

I knocked on her door, and practically before saying hello I demanded to know her middle name, sure it was—the greatest thing ever or the biggest mistake of my life—Desdemona or Deliliah or Davida.

{ * }The quick aside between the dashes above was a gutsy idea from Dave. On the one hand, it helps clarify that I felt both excited that I may have found the one and terrified that she might be too much like myself, but on the other hand, it interrupts the sentence in a weird way that may be misread.

Sense of Doom Growing.

"I don't have one," she smiled.

Sudden Death, Grover.

"Oh," I said.

So we were S. G. and S. D. G. { * }I left these dates the same as before but changed the one's above to be just the month and day. I'm hoping it will emphasize the sameness I was feeling before I got to S. G.'s house and the reality I encountered once there that we aren't the same.1981 and 1982. We went out a few more times, but nothing ever really happened. Perhaps we would've been star-crossed, ill-fated, cosmologically unsuited—we never got far enough to find out. Something Didn't Go. That's always been the real mystery for me anyway: why some loves catch and some don't. How all the tumblers can line up but still the key won't turn. It's almost a miracle when it does, when one person likes another at the same time that that person likes them—it's a shuttle-launch window, a total solar eclipse. It's a real miracle, and yet it happens uncounted times every day as our planet tumbles and rolls on to the stars.

How Something Didn't Go.

{ * }Endings, of course, are the hardest part to get right. This is just another try, to see how it goes. Although I really like the meaning behind the images of a space shuttle and an eclipse, it feels a little off topic. In an essay this tight and terse, you can't indulge yourself at all.

{ * }Also, I should say at this point that Dave and I spoke a lot about what this essay was really about. Was I happy or sad to see it not work out? Did I want it to work out or not? How do I feel about it now? Who knows? I can say that I was both freaked out and hopeful as I was getting into it (which I think I've conveyed here), and I was both relieved and disappointed when the sparks didn't fly. Have I said enough on this, though? Does it connect enough to the common experience of all people to be poignant?

¹ My sister got married on my birthday, which has been great for me. I'm thinking of doing the same thing myself.
² Before you jump to conclusions, let me explain. It's rare to find anyone, male or female, that combines all these skills. It seems like no one gets through college without learning a few chords and how to play "Free Fallin'" or that Green Day song that was the emblem of everyone's senior class a few years back. But so few ever take it further, ever learn how to really play. And given that the proportion of guitar-playing males to the skilled guitar-playing males is completely bonkers, and taking into account that there are that many fewer girls than boys picking up guitars to begin with, it follows that there are very very few girls who can do more than play third-rate Jewel covers.^4
3 Actually he got a whole date with her. For me. What a bro: he asked a girl out on my behalf. That's going above and beyond.
⁴ If you were born after, say, 1989, change "Free Fallin'" above to "Wonderwall," "Green Day" to "Dashboard Confessional," and "Jewel" to—I don't know—"Michelle Branch"?

{ * }I'm still not sure "Wonderwall" is the best choice for this, but it's the best I could do at 3 in the morning. I need a young guitarist to set me straight—what are all the kids playing these days?

=============

Also, in the revision process I thought of several things that might be included in this essay that aren't yet. Rather than break my brain trying to fit them in at this stage of the revision, I've just written them down to consider as I go forth:

1. "Somethin' Stupid": The song was sung by Frank and Nancy Sinatra, a father and daughter. That's kinda weird. Maybe I could draw a parallel between the near-incest feel of that and the "cosmological incest" feel of my relationship with SG? Also, I might consider using the phrase "something stupid" later in the essay to link back to the oddness of the whole situation, of singing those lines with this girl.
2. The song SG played at the concert was one she wrote called "Movin' On," about how little she intended to worry about things, including failed relationships. Oddly appropriate. Also, the first song I ever wrote and performed publicly was called "Movin' On." No joke.
3. The song I performed at the concert was called "The Sweetest Part"; I had written it about a girl who eventually broke up with me. I'm not sure if that connects at all, but whatever.

Well, that does it for the first round of revision. Hope it sheds some light on how this works and what I have in mind when I write. I'll post round 2 just as soon as I do it. All comments, suggestions, and opinions are welcomed.

What I Do, or Revising

As a grad student, I have a hard time explaining what exactly it is I do.

I mean, first off I can't even explain to people where I go to school. I go to Ohio University, not Ohio State University. It's in Athens, a tiny town in the country, not Columbus, the state capital. Our football team is in the MAC (which you've never heard of), not the Big 10 (which you can't get away from). OSU is the largest single-campus school in the country; OU is the oldest university in the state, first in the Northwest Territory (which gives you some idea how old it is—one year older than Joseph Smith, one year younger than Ralph Waldo Emerson).

Got that? OU, not OSU. Athens, not Columbus. Brains, not brawn, and certainly not money. Age, not size.

You don't got it.

What I do is even harder to explain than where I do it: I'm getting an MA in English. Creative writing, to be specific. Creative nonfiction, to be precise.

Creative nonfiction is a genre, like fiction or poetry. Only, unlike fiction, the stories must be true, and unlike poetry, there aren't so many line breaks. Most of the time. (The truth is that we are always stepping on each others' toes—hey, we're writers, not dancers.) To put it simply, creative nonfiction is true stories told well. It is things like personal essays, memoirs, or travel writing.

It is, really, like this blog.

But don't go getting the idea that me writing this is going to get me a degree. There is a fundamental difference between what I do for school and what I do for the web. And that difference is revising. Going back and looking again, wrestling with the words and ideas until they are as good as I can make them. It's craft. What I do is craft.

Get that? What I do is craft. Words.

You don't get it.

Which is why I've decided to share with you some of the process. On Wednesday I wrote a post called "Stars, Doubts, Girls" that wasn't like most blog posts I do. It had something more to it. I started with just a stolen phrase I thought was clever: Ash's "cosmological incest." But before I knew it, it was 2 in the morning and I had spent hours carefully laying out a story, balancing memories and observations that were nowhere near my thoughts when I started, and playing with words and timing to make it swing just right. I had been drawn in by the fun of trying to describe pink light on a red-headed girl and what I felt when I saw her. I had been drawn on by the accidental inspiration to use my initials to further the story and then drawn deeper by the need to think up as many SDG phrases as possible. In the end I felt I had come close to something, a truth both disappointing and hopeful.

Since it was a blog post, I published it then and there. But since I am a writer (and since my roommate demanded it), I'm not done with it yet. It bears revision; it can be improved. I'm going to craft it—that's what I do.

Tomorrow I'll post the first round of revision for your perusal.

Stars, Doubts, Girls

The other day Ash, Jake, Joey, and I were dinking around the office talking, when someone brought up the idea of dating people with your same birthday. On the one hand, it could be neat and really really convenient (as far as remembering one more important date). But on the other hand, pointed out Ash, it might be a form of cosmological incest.

As the only one in the room that had actually pulled this off, I can say it does have a certain creepiness to it. I once dated a girl exactly one year younger than me, and it was weird, but not in the way you might think. The thing was that we had way more in common than our birthday.

For one, we met at a concert. A concert we were both performing in. I was standing in the wings after performing my song for the BYU Guitars Unplugged concert a few years ago when I noticed that the girl presently performing was pretty good. I mean, I don't want to rag on girls or anything, but the truth is that it's kinda rare to meet a guitar-playing girl who actually has good technique, good rhythm, and a good voice. And good song-writing skills.¹ She had red hair, and this pink light was shining down on her like magic, making her all strawberries-and-cream.

Which brings me to the next thing we had in common: good looks.

Tom and I tearing it up at the concert.
You can't tell, but under my jeans my left leg
is in a splint since I had torn my ACL skiing
just a week or so before this.
Anyway, my brother got her number for me² since he worked at the same place as her, and we went out a few times. I remember we went on a walk once early on and we were asking each other questions—you know those first-date-ish questions like "What's your favorite ____?" or "If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?"—well, I'd ask her one of those and silently be thinking up my own answer, and then she'd say exactly what I was thinking. It was weird. I asked her when her birthday was, and when she said, "June 11," I died. It was like I was falling in love with myself; it felt so wrong—but I was so attractive.

We sat in my living room and sang "Somethin' Stupid," crowding together around a sheet of lyrics as I shuffled out the chords on my guitar. She fell into the harmonies so naturally as to melt my bones.

Sometime midweek I realized that her initials were S. G. My initials, not counting my middle name, are S. G. Walking to pick her up for our next date, I reeled off D-names in my mind: Danielle, Darcy, Daphne, Deborah, Diane, Dawn, Dorothy, Drew. SDG: Stephen David Grover. SDG: Super Dateable Girl. June 11, 1981. June 11, 1982. SDG: Sensible Days Gone.

Sudden Death, Grover.

Sense of Doom Growing.

I knocked on her door, and practically before saying hello I demanded to know her middle name, sure it was Desdemona, Deliliah, Davida.

"I don't have one," she smiled.

"Oh," I said.

So we were S. G. and S. D. G. 1981 and 1982. We went out a few more times, but nothing ever really happened. Perhaps we would've been star-crossed, ill-fated, cosmologically unsuited—we never got far enough to find out. Something Didn't Go. That's always been the real mystery for me anyway: why some loves catch and some don't. How all the tumblers can line up but still the key won't turn. It's almost a miracle when it does, when one person likes another at the same time that that person likes them—it's a shuttle-launch window, a total solar eclipse. It's a real miracle, and yet it happens uncounted times every day as our planet tumbles and rolls on to the stars.


¹ Before you jump to conclusions, let me explain. It's rare to find anyone, male or female, that combines all these skills. It seems like no one gets through college without learning a few chords and how to play "Free Fallin'" or that Green Day song that was the emblem of everyone's senior class a few years back. But so few ever take it further, ever learn how to really play. And given that the proportion of guitar-playing males to the skilled guitar-playing males is completely bonkers, and taking into account that there are that many fewer girls than boys picking up guitars to begin with, it follows that there are very very few girls who can do more than play third-rate Jewel covers.^3
2Actually he got a whole date with her. What a bro: he asked a girl out on my behalf. That's going above and beyond.
³ If you were born after, say, 1989, change "Free Fallin'" above to "Wonderwall," "Green Day" to "Dashboard Confessional," and "Jewel" to—I don't know—"Michelle Branch"?

Contest!

I, David Grover, am a fan of contests. I have an entire philosophy about contests. I enter every contest I can.

But now, faithful readers, it's your turn to enter a contest. Behold, the first ever Journey to the East contest:

The Reverse Pretend Crush Guest Post Contest

Here's the deal:

1. Read "Reverse Pretend Crush," a post I posted last week.
2. Write a guest post for this blog entitled "Why the Reverse Pretend Crush Is Not a Viable Life Strategy."
3. Send it to me at groooover[at]gmail[dot]com by 11:59 pm this Sunday, Hawaii time.

I'll choose the best 3 posts and post them on this blog, and then you all will get to vote for your favorite one. The writer of the guest post that gets the most votes will get flowers and a box of chocolates and permanent pretend-crush status with me.*

So get reading and writing. For all you lurkers out there (those who read but don't comment), this is your big chance to quit being creepy. You have a whole work week to procrastinate, a Saturday to put it off, and a Sunday to get it done.


* Unless you're related to me. If so, you just get bragging rights against the rest of the family all this holiday season.

The Circleville Pumpkin Show

Last Friday I tagged along with the Kinghorns to the Circleville Pumpkin Show, a local event that's been held every year since 1904 or something. It's kind of a hassle to go to things like this—I always drag my feet and make up excuses and say I'll go next year—but I've been living a philosophy of saying yes to fun more, so when the chance arose I took it. It helped that I had spent the week getting mountains of stuff done through a combination of will, going to bed at 10, and rewarding myself with cream soda; by Friday, I actually had 7 hours to blow without any immediate deadline to worry about.

Here's Kate and I with the 1st place pumpkin. That ain't no Burger King crown—this picture doesn't do it justice. I could live inside that thing.



Here's me getting my fortune told by a computer. I'm pretty sure it was related to KITT.



Two words: Pumpkin Pizza. Also: Pumpkin Donuts. Also: onion rings, giant brats, pecan prailines. Also: Danger (see below).



Here's one of the main drags of Circleville in all its pumpkiney glory. The show fills five or six streets like this. Locals make a killing charging for parking in their yards.



Looking down from a ferris wheel.



The freaky thing about carnival rides is that you know they were built by gypsies, but you don't know whether gypsies adhere to the standards set by welders' unions and accredited-engineering-degree dispensers and local governments. You don't even know if the welding equipment was legitimately purchased and is up to code.



Gourds of all kinds are welcome at the Pumpkin Show.



I really don't know what to say about this. Is it a Halloween Tree? Is it a shrine to the Great Pumpkin?



Live it up: you're all going to be pies.



Here's where the danger comes in: The Fireball. Pretty much it's a 60-foot high circle with a roller coaster car attached. Some bum sits at the control and decides how fast and in what direction to spin you.



Our particular bum/conductor took great joy in letting us hang motionless for upwards of 20 seconds at a time, then throwing us through a spin cycle of a minute or so. Worst best ever.



And the place was crawling with Shriners! They made up a good third of the parade all by themselves, noodling around in tiny cars and playing in Dixieland jazz bands and strutting in lime green tuxedos. Classy. I need a fez.



This is the saddest individual I've ever seen. He was made entirely of patches and tears and was dragging an old broom broken in four places and held together with shoelaces.


Big thanks to Kate for remembering to bring a camera and for taking most of these pictures. See you at next year's show. And if you're in Texas this year, you should be going to this.

Reverse Pretend Crush

Behold my latest invention: the Reverse Pretend Crush.

It's not what it sounds like.

You know what a crush is—it's when you feel all delicate inside whenever that special someone walks by. Crushes are great, but they can have pretty undesirable consequences (disheveled hearts, mainly).

And I'm sure you can guess what a pretend crush is: it's when you only pretend to have a crush on someone. The bonus here is that you still get to have something to get up for, to get dressed and be on time for, but you don't risk nearly as much. You still get to gush and groan and giddily write letters to your mission-bound siblings, but there is lots less feeling sissy about never getting up the nerve to say anything. Not saying anything is the whole point. Pretend crushes can get you though the low times when a real crush is inadvisable or unfeasible.

For a long time, pretend crushes seemed like the way to go, but then, against all odds, I discovered their hidden danger.¹

So now I've invented a replacement, something I'm pretty sure is foolproof. It's the reverse pretend crush. The thing is this: instead of imagining you have a crush on someone, you imagine someone has a crush on you.

[This is the sound of your mind being blown. If you were wearing socks, they are now across the room. If you weren't wearing socks, look down.]

Genius. You go to work or school or church or wherever secure in the pretend knowledge that Such'nsuch has a secret crush on you. You try to catch him or her looking wistfully in your direction. You try to look cool and say intelligent things so as not to destroy the illusion that you are indeed crushable and crushworthy. You dress a little nicer in the morning, brush that hair a little more gallantly because, hey, someone will be noticing.

It's working for me. One day on the pretend crush diet and suddenly I can match like a robot running the latest matching software. Check this out:

I got up this morning and put on my favorite shirt. This Mossimo polo from Target recently surpassed my old brown bartender shirt (thanks Liz, Christmas '06) as my luckiest top.



Then I put on my favorite shoes. I spent months searching for the perfect pair of silver New Balance and weeks breaking them in (fashion isn't comfort, says Kate), but it was all worth it. It was even worth sending back the first pair when they weren't quite right (thanks Zappos for your excellent customer service and thanks Zach for bringing the glory of silver shoes to my attention).



Next I slid on this pair of super socks (thank you Gap clearance rack and thank you old Gap gift-card-found-in-my-wallet-from-Christmas-with-a-few-bucks-left-on-it). How I got them on under my shoes I'll never figure out.



Lastly I went downstairs to see what was hanging in the coat closet, and I noticed this sweater, also Mossimo and also from Target, but purchased at least 8 months before and long since forgotten. Can you even believe it?


Watch out pretend crush! You dead.

¹I don't want to talk about it. Get me on a good day and liquor me up with cheesecake or cream soda, and then maybe I'll talk. Maybe.