{"id":1378,"date":"2012-05-03T21:23:31","date_gmt":"2012-05-04T04:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/?p=1378"},"modified":"2012-08-31T13:06:18","modified_gmt":"2012-08-31T20:06:18","slug":"adding-depth-through-detail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/03\/adding-depth-through-detail\/","title":{"rendered":"Adding Depth Through Detail"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Watching reruns of Star Trek, Dhahran, 1978. Smooth floors - great for my skate board. Love the decor. Then again, can't complain - we didn't own it.<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the more interesting, albeit frustrating, aspects of revising is the discovery and opening of a treasure trove of long forgotten memories. I say frustrating but that\u2019s not really correct because it implies a certain negativity that is undeserved. Perhaps I should say it\u2019s laborious because I thought the book was done, done, and done, and now I\u2019m having to essentially rewrite whole chunks from scratch. Yet I remind myself that it’s not such a bad thing.<\/p>\n

These memories have awakened a world of senses I thought I\u2019d lost. The chapter I’m working on now, my first trip to Saudi Arabia, deserved more than a simple list of things I did over the summer of 1978. I went to the pool \u2013 so what? I went to the city \u2013 so what? I bought coffee and pastry at a coffee shop \u2013 again, so what?<\/p>\n

What I\u2019d mostly left out in the original text were certain subtleties of sounds, the sights, the aromas, and especially the little quirks that make these events stand out in the first place. And, of course, the motivation. The result is the difference between telling a story and engaging the reader. Changing the presentation to grab the reader, and if I succeed, transport him or her to where I was all those years ago – that’s the goal. In this chapter, they\u2019ll taste the fresh-squeezed orange juice in the Byuni cafe, savor the aroma of cardamom-infused Arabic coffee in the Modka, and come to understand the pleasure of sitting on a curb and eating a humble shawarma.<\/p>\n

Of course there\u2019s more to this chapter than an introduction to Saudi Arabia. I had just come back from a very unpleasant first year of boarding school in Northern Ireland. I wanted more than anything to stay in Saudi, go to school there and find some friends. My parents told me I couldn\u2019t, that because of the way schools were set up in Saudi, I\u2019d only be able to stay for one year and then have to go to boarding school anyway. So, they said, it would be best to just stay in Northern Ireland, and that\u2019s where I went at the end of the chapter.<\/p>\n

My brother, on the other hand, had been expelled from two boarding schools in Ireland and asked not to return to a third. While he also couldn\u2019t stay in Saudi Arabia, he didn\u2019t have to go to boarding school, either. Instead, he got to go to the American School on the resort island of Majorca, in the Mediterranean. Beaches, beautiful girls, live at home (well, apartment, at least, with Mom) \u2013 he couldn\u2019t have asked for a better situation. And yet even then he wasn\u2019t satisfied.<\/p>\n

\u2026but that\u2019s a different chapter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the more interesting, albeit frustrating, aspects of revising is the discovery and opening of a treasure trove of long forgotten memories. I say frustrating but that\u2019s not really correct because it implies a certain negativity that is undeserved. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writinghelp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1378"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1587,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions\/1587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}