Author: Anne Shook

I had a teacher once tell me “kill your darlings”—what she meant is that sometimes the parts of a piece I loved most needed to be cut altogether. The original title of this piece was “eyes like the weather” which has personal, sentimental value but as the piece grew, it didn’t hold the same weight. When the editors asked me to change the title, I thought about where the bulk of the inspiration from the piece came from, which was a conversation at a gas pump. After changing the title, I went through the different images and similes in the piece and recentered them around ~car~ things. I feel like it added theme, cohesion, and made the piece more clear.

I received feedback that the clarity of the piece fell off when I started to introduce new “characters.” The language surprised me because in the piece I talk about my Dad and my Grandma, but it’s true, to the reader they are characters. I realized I needed to expand on the “where” and “who” in the second half of the piece to make the images and experience more clear. I added a line about “unfamiliar rooms” and tied in “corners” to the musical event to give a stronger sense of space. The new capitalization of “We” signifies the royal, familial “We,” as we hold cautious hope for the future of our family, even though it looks different than we expected.