Yesterday I finished the revision of A CAGE OF BONES, first published ten years ago. Not surprisingly, I found the writing uneven, with some remarkably good bits and some very embarrassing patches. My strongest objection lay with the longer descriptive passages. I was able to cut out much of the excess while maintaining the book’s simplicity and charm—it’s a story about young people, after all, and I didn’t want to change it too much. When I got to the final chapter, however, I had a moment where I thought I might not be able to re-publish it without substantial rewriting. To me it seemed excessively flowery and I couldn’t see any way around it. For comparison, I re-read the ending of Joyce’s A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST, another story about liberation of the spirit. To my great surprise, his ending is far more flowery than mine—embarrassingly so! With that in mind, I pruned the last chapter but left it mostly as it was, hoping future readers will be more tolerant than me.
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