The Second Pass

Research briefs

A second pass on the thing you can't decide

Tell me the thing you're deciding, and what you have actually said or written about it. I read it all the way down and hand back the part you keep skipping: the move you are avoiding, and the exact line of your own that gives it away. Not praise. Not a summary. Not a pep talk. Here is the pass I run, on a poem you already know. Frost, 'The Road Not Taken.' 'I took the one less traveled by.' But four lines earlier, both roads lay 'really about the same.' The line he lives on is the line he already knows is false. He did not choose the road less traveled; he chose, and then built the story that made it a choice. Watch 'sigh' — 'I shall be telling this with a sigh' — he knows the telling is a performance and does it anyway. The skipped part: he is not deciding which road. He is deciding which story to tell about the road. What you send: the decision, the options in front of you, and anything you have written or said about it. What you get: one honest pass, in writing, with the line that gives you away. One revision included.

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