First lines, contd.

As a technical matter, I'm fascinated by my work on the opening lines -- how it has me thinking in more focused ways about theme and plot and character and voice and deciding which is predominant in this book and what needs to be signaled at the beginning. As a practical matter, it's pretty scary, for reasons I stated before.

Yesterday afternoon I read through the first grafs of several books, noticing how they function differently. That inspired me to make a few more attempts at mine in addition to the several I wrote yesterday morning. I also read them all to my wife and talked them over with her.

Basically, I'm torn between a story-telling opening and a scene-setting opening. (And, if the former, being clear on which aspect of the story I'm opening with.) My head and my wife are telling me the former works better. But I continue to be in love with the scene-setting openings I've written, which my wife keeps telling me don't work. Maybe mine don't work now, but I'm drawn to them for some reason, and I think it can work if I figure it out.

I'm thinking especially of the opening grafs of A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley. When I read that over yesterday, I was amazed and a little uncomfortable with how similar it sounded to the scene-setting opening I had drafted earlier in the day. There's an unconscious influence there I guess. Functionally, there's really no story in those opening grafs. It's all geography. Literally, it gives the lay of the land. Which would seem to be an unnecessarily long way around to starting the story, but what it does is establish the voice and sound a thematic note about the perspective and presumptions that the narrator is starting with and that we are getting a hint of a challenge to. It works.

Well, even though I'm drawn to my attempt at something similar, I started this morning by typing in one of the more vivid and tactile of the story-telling openings that I came up with. That works too--for sure and right now for this book. I returned to working on the computer and doing a lot of the patching that I complained about the other day. At certain points where I have to rewrite because of how I'm combining two episodes, I was able to get in the zone OK and produce it on the computer and then move on to patching in the next section.

Still, it's slower work than I want at this point. I got through about 11 pp. Since this four chapter section that I'm reorganizing is 75 pp., it's looking like a longer journey than I planned on for this draft.

First lines, last steps

I'm finding myself working and working on the first lines of the book, which is very unsettling. I know it makes sense that as I near the end of the process the theme becomes clearer and the need to clarify the statement of that theme becomes apparent. But I can't help feeling that the first lines, which I wrote first over two years ago, is a pretty basic piece of the book that ought to be settled by now. It's freaking me out a little.

But I'm getting good at ignoring my fears and plowing ahead, and it was illuminating if slow work this a.m. About a two hour session. One hour of plain writing in long hand on paper on the back porch just like the old days, basically rewriting from memory some of the stuff that I've already written several times, but hopefully sharper and more focused. Then another hour of trying to refocus and brainstorm my way out of a problem.

The problem is really the question of what the first line needs to do. Looking at it through the question of "intention," which I've been doing lately as noted before, I might be establishing theme, establishing character, starting the main story, laying out background to the main story, etc. Probably ideally all of these should be done at once in one elegant, vivid line that starts in media res, gives voice to the main character, references the time period and latitude and longitude, creates suspense and promises more action. In reality, as I brainstormed several possibilities, the more I worked to establish character or setting, the more it felt like a slow start. The more I established theme, the more abstract the language was. And the more I succeeded in getting the story started, the more utilitarian the language felt. Anyway, that presumes clarity about what the story actually is--what thread of events we need to pick up first.

I didn't mention establishing voice, and what I'm really leaning toward is the idea that establishing voice is the most important thing -- that the reader can tolerate a slow start to the story if they're interested in the voice. That's a theory, and one I don't have a hundred percent confidence in, but it's what I'm going to stew on until tomorrow, when I'll try again.

I can't believe I'm near the end of June and I'm stuck on the first line of my book. It's not looking like I'll get done this summer. My only hopes is that a breakthrough here will lead to quick clear work later on.

Longhand, short attention span

Minimal progress this morning. The problem is that because the work I'm doing is on the computer, I succumbed to the temptation of a work-related email, which ate up a lot of my fresh-in-the-morning energy. Stupid.

Another problem once I got started, seemingly unrelated, is the temptation to patch up the section I'm working on instead of rewriting it. This is the rewrite of Ch 1-4, starting with the opening pages of course. What I have is very strong in the context of what it's doing, but I have to take it another direction. And in so doing, while working on the computer with the file of existing material, I keep trying to make use of bits and pieces of what's already there. Partly because I don't want to waste it and partly on the assumption that it will be less time consuming than writing new from the beginning.

As a result, I'm not really in the proper creative frame of mind. It's more a mechanical way of looking at things. And it yields misshappen fruit, so I start to get turned off by it.

So I'm thinking . . . maybe I should be working in longhand at this stage. That would definitely be better for the problem of getting distracted by email. And it might be better for the second problem. What if I just literally rewrite this section on blank paper without reference to the existing work? I haven't done that before because it sounds scary -- It's putting myself back at the beginning; it feels like a defeat; it feels like no progress; it feels like a waste of what I have; it feels inefficient.

But really it might be more efficient. I'm just talking about a few pages. Just inventing it from scratch might be less time consuming than trying to patch things together. And it's probably more . . . authentic. Or honest. More aligned with what the work needs. It needs to become what it should be, and paying attention so much to what it already has been is probably a drag on that process. Writing longhand again would be a way to cut the tie. Instead of working with the existing material in front of me, I'll rely on my memory of it--or better yet, on my wish for what it was.

Just for a few pages. Even if I end up writing nearly the same paragraphs in parts, with the same metaphors and imagery and jokes, they should come in on point better, with better flow. And the new material should be more in the right voice instead of having that patchy quality.

I'm going to try that again fresh tomorrow morning. Strange to be struggling over the opening pages like this so late in the process, but I suppose it makes sense.

Rebooting, intention and macro edits

On the official first day of summer, at least according to astronomers, I'm rebooting my summer plan, which was supposed to get started over a month ago at the end of the academic calendar. I've made the mistake of waiting for certain elements to fall into place before starting the next draft, all the while thinking it would be any day now, and the day never came--thought it still may any day now. It's been quite frustrating and I'm disappointed to have wasted the month this way, but I've decided to cut my losses. I'm starting the next draft with the resources I have at hand. Starting this morning.

My hope has been that I'm at the stage where I can concentrate just on sentence-level work, but I know that's wishful thinking. I think I can say that I'm beyond the "digging and developing" stage and am trying to bring it all into sharper focus. But not just by making sentences sharper. I really need to look at each chapter or episode and decide what the point is and bring the important part into starker relief. I think that's mostly by carving away what's extra, but it also includes revising what's there to hit the beat more energetically.

The way I'm thinking of this is in terms of "intention" which is a notion that I got from reading Susan Bell's book The Artful Edit. She defines it as the overarching aim that guides both the writer and the reader and advises, "Ask yourself when you edit: What is it I want? What am I trying to do here? Where am I going with this?"

I suppose that's not radically different from other goggles I've put on to evaluate the work, like asking myself what the character wants or what problem the scene is complicating and moving forward. But it's a fresh look.

So I'm asking those questions, doing a lot of journaling as I go. I did that this a.m. for the first five chapters, and it was quite illuminating. It really does help me see how the chapters can connect to one another, where they don't yet, and where some material probably won't align with the overall intention and can safely be pulled out.

For example, one of the issues up in the air right now is about the necessity of Chapter 5. Why is it in there? What's it doing that other chapters don't do? After this exercise I have a much better answer to that. I'm not perfectly convinced that the chapter is necessary, but I have a better potential rationale for it, so I'll tackle the revision with this new focus in mind and see if I can make the chapter work.

I'm torn between doing that kind of meta-writing all the way through the book or pausing to make revisions with the focus that I've achieved, chapter by chapter. Right now I'm leaning toward the latter, which would mean starting to revise the first clump of chapters tomorrow. 1-4 are a single unit that need to be revised together. It's probably the area with the most drastic rewriting that needs to happen. Then Chapter 5. And hopefully after that I'll be cruising.

I don't have a realistic sense of the timeline. I just have a longing to get this book done this summer. The kinds of revisions I'm talking about keep increasing in complexity, so I don't know if that's possible. After all, intention is item 1 in Susan Bell's checklist of MACRO edits.

Back to work--line editing

I found a way to make some progress today without having all the comments back from my reader, and I got in a good a.m. session like has been my habit in previous drafts.

I realized that there are some key episodes in the book that are very unlikely to be cut and that I could probably risk doing line editing in those spots. As I was saying all through the last draft, I'm eager to start working at the line level and trying to get the language to pop a lot more. I want to be doing the scalpel work. On paper, with a red pen. As long as there was still "developmental" work to be done, I postponed that.

So that's what I did this morning. Really it was one complete chapter, Ch. 4. Since in the last revision, I shortened most of the chapters and broke up long ones into shorter chapters, I think it's going to work out that they can be worked on in one session. This was a 20-page chapter and I worked through it in about 90 minutes.

So, this strategy should keep me busy for a few days next week. There are a handful of places where I can probably safely do this kind of work without getting too far ahead of my reader's pending comments.

Tentatively finished with the mark up

Against my better judgment, I'm declaring myself done with this read through and mark up process. There's a lingering problem in the last chapter on a par with other problems that I have fixed along the way and that I ought to fix now. But it's the end of the week, and I want this not to be hanging over into the next week. Maybe I'll find time to think it through and tidy it up over the weekend, and I can always do it in a spare afternoon while I'm involved in the next round.

Next up, inputting all the changes I marked on the printed typescript into the Word doc. I'm wild guessing when I budget three weeks for that. Let's say by April 20.

The simple changes are going to be tedious and just require brute force to crank it out. (I'll probably burn my eyes out doing it. I went to the eye doctor the other day to talk to him about my eye strain. He reluctantly gave me a prescription for computer reading glasses but says the only real solution is spend less time on the computer.)

And the less simple changes--places where I cheated along the way and just made notes like "foreground x element in this section"--are going to require concentration, and it's impossible to estimate what kind of road blocks I'll hit then.

My initial goal during the process just finished was to cut 100 pp. At one point my trend was running higher so I though I might cut 135 pp. or more. There was less to cut as I got closer to the end, though. I ended up with an estimated 112 pp. cut, which would leave me with a typescript of about 427 pp. That's just eyeballing from the pencil marks on the printout though. I won't really know until all the changes are in the computer.

All right. Fresh start Monday. Pile the mess next to my computer and start again at page 1. I think of this as stage B of the sixth draft.

Baby steps

My pace has slowed way down. After a little bit of time on Saturday and a little bit this afternoon I'm still dealing with Ch. 12 (f/k/a 13 and probably in the future to be known as 14).

I'm implementing the plan described earlier to split it up and insert the first half into a break between the two halves of Ch. 8. So far, I've only really done the cutting and pasting. There is still a lot of the new writing of transitional and framing material that goes with that.

In real terms, it's probably only a few hours of work, but I'm feeling hesitant and doubtful and that makes me procrastinate, so I'm poking along pretty slowly. And I don't feel like I can move on to the last three chapters of the book without getting this chapter sorted out, so . . . I'm not feeling very confident about finishing the "read through" this week since I know I'm going to lose a couple days to other commitments.

Toni Morrison on rewriting

From What Moves at the Margin, a new collection of nonfiction essays by Toni Morrison earlier this year:

When you first start writing--and I think it's true for a lot of beginning writers--you're scared to death that if you don't get that sentence right that minute it's never going to show up again. And it isn't. But it doesn't matter--another one will, and it'll probably be better. And I don't mind writing badly for a couple of days because I know I can fix it--and fix it again and again and again, and it will be better. I don't have the hysteria that used to accompany some of those dazzling passages that I thought the world was just dying for me to remember. I'm a little more sanguine about it now. Because the best part of it all, the absolutely most delicious part, is finishing it and then doing it over. That's the thrill of a lifetime for me: if I can just get done with that first phase and then have infinite time to fix it and change it. I rewrite a lot, over and over again, so that it looks like I never did. I try to make it look like I never touched it, and that it takes a lot of time and lot of sweat. (pg. 79)

I try to give credit to others for the various ideas about writing that have influenced me, but there is one formulation of my personal philosophy that I'm going to claim for myself. For years I have confidently told my students in freshman comp classes that "There are no rules for writing; there are only rules for re-writing." What I was getting at is that all of us as writers in whatever form sit down at the desk with a head full of rules (don't end a sentence with a preposition; write what you know; write with a reader in mind; have a strong thesis . . . ) and that, while all of those rules are something you should seriously consider observing, all of them are also baggage that slow you down during the first draft.

The trick that I discovered for myself--and that I've seen other writers articulate as Morrison does here; Anne Lamott's celebration of "Shitty First Drafts" is another--is to give yourself permission (even the assignment) during the drafting stage to write very poorly and very much contrary to all the rules. My wife calls these "zero-drafts," because they're less than a first draft. It's really raw material. In a sense, my own first draft would be better characterized as a zero-draft. It wasn't until the first rewrite was complete that I had something sensible and cohesive to really start trying to fix.

Giving yourself permission to write poorly at the beginning, gives you material to work with, and it's in the re-writing phase that you start to try and write well, by whatever rules you deem worthy of observing. I learned that habit in journalism and it served me well writing this book so far. Not incidentally, I've never felt like writer's block was a serious problem for me. I'm a little bit stuck-up about the subject. To me, it's a symptom of unrealistic expecatations about what a first draft should do. Personally, like Morrison, "I don't mind writing badly for a couple of days because I know I can fix it."

Now that I'm done bragging about my maturity, I have to confess that I'm not quite as sanguine as Morrison. In this project there has been a range of work so far between drafting and careful line revision. The drafting was a joy because it's all id--just creating a mess regardless of the consequences. The little bit of time I have put in with careful line revision has been pleasurable. I've heard writers, like Morrison here, describe that as the most pleasurable part, and I expect to enjoy it when I actually get to that stage. But in between has been this long process of figuring out what the book actually is and needs, and that has involved a lot more doubt and fear and hard slogging through. I have not enjoyed it except for the rare day when I find the solution to a problem and lay it out.

I'm hoping that my inexperience with writing a novel was the main cause of that and that in the future I'll both minimize the need for that process (with better planning) and live through it with less doubt and fear, because I will know what it is. In fact, I've been feeling a burst of confidence lately and fantasizing about when I can choose a second novel project and launch into that equipped with all the experience and perspective I've acquired this time.

Zooming through Chapter 4

I'm in the zone, I guess. I'm putting in a lot more hours working on it, spending a lot of time thinking about it when I'm not working. And I'm cranking through the edits.

I think that's the nature of editing for me vs. writing or rewriting. It doesn't take as much creative energy so I don't get exhausted so quickly. It actually is very tiring, but I don't notice it until I'm done and I can go several hours that way.

But, is editing what I'm supposed to be doing? I'm trouble a little by the thought that I'm neglecting the hard work. Essentially, on Chapters 4 and 3, and chapter 2 to a lesser extent, what I do is read it through and identify around 2 keys spots that are important and not that well developed and maybe 1 or 2 other sections that seem to be in the wrong place. And I make a bunch of marks where at the sentence level things are unclear. Then the next day I go through the computer file working on the bigger picture items first and then--fairly soon--moving on to the sentence edits.

That implies that the couple places that weren't very well developed are the only really serious flaws left in the chapters and it implies that my fairly quick work on them is sufficient. I don't see anything else, but I'm worried that it's too easy.

I'm moving along faster than my wife has time to read it, so I'm flying blind a little bit. I'm getting closer to the day when I'll need to hand off big chunks of it to another reader and get their response.

The total timeline on this kind of work has been about 6-8 hours per chapter. A couple hours or more to read and mark up the chapter, and a few hours to go through the computer file making the changes.

The sentence-level editing I am doing is a pretty rough cut. I do have a list of several bad habits i my sentence constructions that I'll need to spend a lot of time weeding out on my next rewrite/revision.

Related to that is my reading lately of How Fiction Works by James Wood. (I finished it and am reading it a second time as well as all the other essays of his I can find online.) I've been helped enormously by his discussion of the free indirect style. That's given a me a critical vocabulary for thinking more deeply about how I use point of view and how I have been flagging the differences between the narrator and the characters. More on that another time, but essentially I've come to think that I can do a lot better, so I've been experimenting with making some changes here and there as I go with the understanding that I'll be bearing down on that issue when the time for a really careful revision comes.