Continued!  So, last time I was about to physically begin arranging my essay.  I did, indeed, print out my essay, the strands in different colors, and I cut them up and laid them out on my floor.  I initially had two strands.  I added a third strand which I’m not positive about—it’s someone else’s point of view, someone who was involved in the other strands. 

Loose ends? Noooooo!

I like the way it gives more insight into my own story, plus insight as to what was really going on.  It sort of validates some of it, maybe.  That certainly isn’t necessary, but for some reason it jumped out at me, so even if it doesn’t make it to the next draft, the third strand is there for now. 

 So I arranged and rearranged, occasionally finding a piece across the room after it was hijacked by one of my kids, and finally came up with an order I was OK with.  I wondered how long each piece should be, so I turned to Jo Ann Beard and my favorite essay, “Cousins,” and checked out what she did.  It was pretty variable, a page-long chunk here, four pages in a more tense parts, a longer chunk at the end.  But Beard was doing something rather different.  I’m trying to weave two stories together, with two voices (if I keep the third strand).  She was, instead, giving a history of the relationships of four women, five or six stories instead of two or three.  But I tried to follow her lead, making it neat before I overlapped the next strand, while making it a place a reader would remember when it picks up again.

 I numbered the pieces, went back to my office, and began cutting and pasting.  I kept the original versions of the strands just in case, and will save each draft of the braiding.  After I was fairly satisfied with the order, I read it through.  I got bogged down in one part, and I couldn’t figure out why.  It’s very personal stuff, so it’s hard for me to step out of it sometimes, but I think the reason is that the second strand isn’t pointing to the same emotional center the rest of the piece is.  Though it’s related, it opens up a whole new set of questions that I’m not prepared to answer in this piece, so I had to prune the second strand so that it was smoother, more a part of the braid than a few stray hairs that were forgotten.

Another thing that’s bothering me is that I have, I think, too many “characters.”  So do I make my ex-boyfriend “X” instead of using his name ten times?   Do I combine two friends into one to save the reader trouble? Do I make my two friends “the friends” or “the girls?” 

 It has been a really interesting exercise to document how I’ve gone about this essay.  Not only writing, but analyzing the way I’m writing and composing, makes me think a lot more about why I’m breaking here, if that scene is doing the work I want it to, if that dialogue could be paraphrased, etc.  It’s good to know that I’m getting to a place where I can sort of recognize the ways in which I tend to muddle a subject, and how to clear them up.  The essay is not ready yet, but I feel like I’ve made major progress in my revising skillz.