THE TROUBLE WITH SECOND DRAFTS

Rewrites are a good thing. In general, a novel gets better with each rewrite. Often, I read a novel that I feel could have used just one more run-through. When I come upon a scene that’s just a bit implausible or some dialogue that doesn’t ring authentic, I think to myself that the writer would have benefitted with another draft.

There are decisions that get made in rewrites. Usually those involve cutting something, or re-arranging elements of the story: This thing needs to happen sooner, or that bit is just a little too long, or too cute, or maybe it’s too melodramatic. There can be any number of things “wrong” with a portion of a novel. The trouble is the fix.

I usually know on a gut-level when I’ve got a problem in a story. I don’t always have the solution when I start my second draft, but I’ve got those places that need extra work earmarked in my mind. Those trouble spots always slow down the second draft, sometimes considerably.

When I do my first read-through, I mark up my pages mercilessly. I have to have a hard copy to do this, so for me, writing a novel takes reams of paper and numerous ink cartridges. I've got to have those margins, to make my marks, and remarks, and notes to self. I’m like a teacher grading a paper.

Trouble comes with knowing when to cut and when to add. It’s easy to cut out things, and then later say, “I need that first bit back in here,” which is another argument for the must-have hard copy. You will still have hold of the part you cut out if you decide you need to add it back again.

On the computer I keep a desktop folder labeled “CUTS,” and when I'm ready to make changes after my pencil-edit, I save all the deleted scenes, interior monologues, and wordy descriptions into my “CUTS” folder. It’s easy to add them back this way, although frankly, once something gets the chop, I rarely paste it back into the story, at least not in its original form.

Another problem with rewrites is being too close to the story, not being able to ferret out the parts that aren’t working. This is why critique groups are sometimes helpful (although I’ll do another blog post on those at some point). Preferably an editor or an agent can help with this problem, but if you’re a beginning writer, you likely don’t have either one of those. At any rate, there comes a time when you need an outside reader, but just not yet. You need to do a couple more drafts first, unless you know someone you really trust, someone who can see the forest despite the trees. (And if you do know someone like that, lend them to me, please.) I have to get a novel as far as I can get it before I ask anyone for help. After all, nobody knows your story better than you do, and it’s important that you listen to yourself before you listen to someone else. You’ll get so you know when it’s the right time to share your baby.

After my third novel came out, I was asked to attend a reading club meeting of members who had all been assigned my book as their monthly novel. This was an excellent group of intelligent, thoughtful, articulate readers. Good discussion happened, and they weren’t the least intimidated by having “the author” sitting right there among them. It fascinated me to hear everyone’s opinion of my characters, their take on what the theme of the book was, on the story arc and on how they were affected by the ending. It was the last part of the discussion that was the biggest revelation to me. Out of the twenty or so people attending, only three felt the novel ended happily. And I was one of the three! Everyone else came away feeling it had a tragic ending. Oops!

I have always wished I’d taken aim at that ending just one more time. So the reader would come away with the feeling I had intended.

The current novel is halfway through its second draft. There are chapters that are already greatly improved, but there are some that still stump me. I find I have more research to do, even after all the research I have already done. I have a multitude of rough edges to file down. Once I’m finished with this rewrite, I will once again let the manuscript rest for a couple of weeks, before I start the process a third time.

Onward…

"Buy a Ticket"

Been thinking today about my continuing good luck in life, and with a little bit of awe and a little bit of realism. I had a happy childhood, was reasonably good in school, had lots of friends, gave birth to two healthy children, finally met my soulmate when I was 54, and have succeeded in almost everything I tried, except I never could learn to play the guitar well and have always envied people with a musical talent. I get along with most people I meet; I'm adaptable. I never won any big important awards, or hit a gambling jackpot, but I never have shied from sticking my neck out. There have even been times when I've been a little audacious.

When I started seriously writing I had no idea what I was charging headlong into. My 8 to 5 job had nearly ground to a halt. My kids needed less but they liked for me to be home. I liked being at home. We were thinking of moving. So I quit my job. I wanted to write. All my life I'd been a heavy reader, and I had grown disgruntled with fiction I selected. I remember clearly thinking one day at the end of an atrocious paperback novel, "I know I can write better than this." And so I decided to try it.

What I quickly found out was this -- it was hard! Everything I put down on paper sounded like a third grade creative exercise. It was not easy to say what I wanted to say, to say it clearly, to make sense of anything. I wasn't even sure what the hell it was I was trying to say, or meant to say. But it challenged me. I wrote my first novel, from start to finish, in four weeks. I gave it to my brother. He'd come to stay a weekend with us. He had a degree in screenwriting. He was the perfect first reader. He made it through about 10 pages, and said, "Well, it's not ready for publication."

I was crushed. I threw out that manuscript and started a new one. This time I took a whole three months, start to finish, and gave it to my best friend to read. She was so patient, sat there reading with me staring at her, waiting to see her reactions, and they disappointed me. She didn't laugh when I thought she would, and she didn't cry at the end like she was supposed to. She smiled at me as she turned over the last page. "It's good," she said.

What?! Good! That's it? Just good? Well, that was not enough, hardly the words I was longing to hear. I chunked that novel in the back of the closet with the other one, and decided to write short stories. I wrote. And wrote. I sent them off with SASE's inside manila envelopes. I got back form rejection letters. I pasted up corkboard squares in my office, and thumbtacked the rejections up there as they came in. I nearly covered the whole room with rejection letters. And then, one day, a little handwritten note was at the bottom of one of the rejections. It said, "Try us again."

Wow! I stared at the words. A thrill went through me. Somebody had actually read the story. I could even sort of tell that the corners of the pages were bent. And they liked it enough to tell me to try again. This was real progress!

One thing that was happening as I created this storm of stories and their accompanying rejection letters is that I was beginning to reread each one as it came back, imagining myself as the first reader. And each time I did that, I changed a little something, tweeked a word or two, moved a paragraph around, cut a sentence. Slowly, so so slowly, I was learning to rewrite. And what began also to happen was more and more of those rejection letters started coming back with little handwritten notes: "Too slow to develop." "Character lacks motivation." "The ending is too abrupt." All of these little bits of feedback helped me find my way to the story that finally, after I had already almost forgotten about it, convinced an editor to publish it, and to pay for the privilege. A whole $40. For days I walked on air.

After that first story acceptance, things began to happen a little faster. I was still awash in rejection letters, but every now and then, just often enough to keep my level of encouragement high, an editor would find something of merit in a story I had sent, and it would be published. These were obscure publications, with names like "High Plains Literary Review," "The Gettysburg Review," "Crosscurrents Magazine," what is called, grouping them all in a category, Quarterlies.

When I finally wrote a novel worthy of publication, it was these Quarterly publications listed in my cover letter that got my manuscript out of the slush pile. My editor was familiar with some of them through her work editing the Best American Short Story series for Norton. She told me this later, after she had offered me a contract for the novel that would eventually be called LILY.

So is that luck? In some ways, I think yes. But I also do believe that we make our own luck. I believe if a person sits on a chair out in the middle of a field wishing for luck to strike them they will go through life disappointed. It's like the old joke about the man who prays for God to let him win the lottery, week after week, prays again and again to win the lottery until finally God speaks from on high and says, "Buy a ticket."

You've got to buy that ticket. And you've got to keep on buying.

Onward ....