Dont’ Worry, Garbage Can, and 53 Miles West of Venus were the last pieces of the story I wrote –These chapters are chock full of inside jokes between me and people in the office. These were the final pieces the story needed to proceed into the second half of Gray Rock. As with the previous chapters, these were fun to write but very difficult to arrange and link. Because I already had 100,000 or so words under my belt and felt confident. These chapters required almost no editing.
In early promotional efforts, we were asked to send excerpt of the book, and I chose Don’t Worry. Both Impresssion Management and The MP Show!!! are more stories than scenes, and contain little about Asperger’s, but I thought Don’t Worry stood alone well for those who knew nothing of the book but the back cover description.
In Impression Management, the “props” story is true and still amazes me, and the e-mail to me is verbatim, but the little faux-spat with Isabel about the quotation written on the wall was actually with Jane and happened in Yo-Yo (Chapter 4). I was going to cut it, but I thought my former teammates would get a laugh out of it – I made my displeasure with the writing on the wall abundantly clear with each of them as well.
For The MP Show!!! I unleashed my inner Dennis Miller and called it like I saw it. I took to calling the monthly meeting The MP Show shortly after I came to understand with whom I was dealing.
My editor Sandy lives in upstate New York. During editing we had a misunderstanding all southerners will appreciate. I wrote:
“To me, her speech seemed no different from the usual spoon-feeding of inspiring clichés and truisms, defining no actual wisdom that could be put to tangible use, dished out every month along with free chicken biscuits and coffee.
Sandy, Yankee that she is, having never experienced the pleasure of a Chick-Fil-A chicken biscuit, inserted a comma after chicken, i.e., “…dished out every month along with free chicken, biscuits and coffee.”
I wrote in the margin. “Sandy what the hell is wrong with you? Have you never heard of Chick-Fil-A?!” She had heard of it but had never seen one, the closest location being in New York City a few hundred miles away, and didn’t know they have chicken biscuits on the breakfast menu. I threatened to fire Sandy but didn’t mean it.
Chapter 14: Don’t Worry
Best Places To Work! 