Sweat Is Just Weakness Leaving The Body

     I have a t-shirt emblazoned with that pithy quote, worn often to the CQB facility to play airsoft. The mindset of those that play either airsoft or paintball is that if you didn't leave bleeding, you didn't play hard enough. I still have the scars on my hands and forearms to testify just how very hard I played. But now, I wear it infrequently, and usually to do a bit of gardening. I have to qualify 'gardening', though, for in the words of my sixteen year old son, I don't 'garden', I landscape. I thought I was gardening, until I spoke with a few gardeners in my neighborhood, and realized that sod stripping, tree felling, rock excavating, brush clearing with a tractor and a saws-all was a far cry from the dainty weed picking they defined as 'gardening'.

Huh.

     I figured that unless I'm filthy, crusted with mud, leaves, or grass clippings, with bloody scratches decorating any exposed skin, and having made a major visual impact to my frequently unruly acre and a half, I was slacking off. It's nice to know that once again, I've blown way past actual expectations and have arrived at precisely where I'm most comfortable--working both smarter and harder. Why is that my comfort zone? Because it keeps me centered, focused, and most importantly, in control. I don't relish the idea of turning any part of my environment over to strange hands, and it gives me the willies when I have to. But I know that I can't drill my own teeth, do my own surgery, and most importantly....sell my own book.
     That's the providence of my agent, the brilliant-minded Natalie Fischer, who has walked me through some of the darkest and scariest terrain I have ever trod--Revision Land. I never thought a person could actually, physically sweat while writing in February. The changes she tactfully suggested pushed me deeper into my characters, forced me to embrace them on a level I had unknowingly avoided. I realized as I was revising that it was hard for me to know them on a truly personal level--they were my creations, and I was being a bit high-handed and distant. Keeping them at arm's length, thinking that if I didn't "get involved" too deeply, it wouldn't hurt as bad when they were rejected by the outside world. And believe me, they got rejected. But Natalie saw something within both myself and my world that she liked, and wanted to bring out the best within all of us.
     So I pushed myself, pinched myself (to make sure I wasn't dreaming, and really did have an amazing agent), sweated, bled, and ground my teeth; and landscaped where I had just been gardening before.
     But like any good garden, it's never really done until you can harvest enough to survive the winter with. I suspect there's still a bit of sweating to do, but I know that without a doubt, I'm up for the challenge.
     The weakness is leaving my manuscript, forcing it drop by drop to a strength that rivals my own.