Drafts

In case you’ve been wondering, I’ve been writing like crazy. Deep into revisions on my fourth draft, fueled by gorgeous and mind-blowing notes from Blythe. So who can blog under those circumstances? My sister-in-law can, so inspired by her, the woman who blogs under the fieriest of conditions, I thought I would spend some time this morning catching you up. I’m mulling over a troublesome scene and I can’t dive into the book just now, so I thought I’d write down a few things I’ve learned about revison.

I’m on my fourth draft. I think. It’s all a little blurry by now. I’ve said it before (or at least implied it): I thought this would go much faster than it has. Throughout the beginning of this process, I had Stephenie Meyer visions – six months to write it, another month before someone picked it up, maybe a few days after that before it was being auctioned off to a very prestigious publishing house and voila! Now, three years and four drafts later, I’ve come to accept a very different fate. Today, I think I can appreciate it a bit.

It used to be, in my youth, that I never looked at anything twice. Even in my brief stint in college I was reluctant to edit. Editing stole from inspiration, I thought. I was foolish in many ways.

I’ve had some incredible experiences with editing this book. Mostly, I’ve learned that there is always more in there, which kind of makes me wonder if I’ll know when I’m really done. I’ve gotten to go deeper, uncovering what really happened, finding things out I didn’t know before – an occurance that never ceases to amaze me. The other thing editing reveals is that, in the end, as my friend Ms. Lamott says, the writing is the thing. I am continually surprised by my own self, and what could be better than that?

My second draft was spured by the Bad Things Happen woman. My main lesson was finding a way around how confined I was by my main character Iso’s voice and experience. I ended up writing about 40 pages from Jack’s point of view. It was great to write from a man’s perspective and to find out what had happened to him in the years they were apart. I brought in a bunch of new and delicious characters and got fabulous information from one of Dan’s best friends about what it was like to be in music school and to then become a working musician.

Through the months I was working on those pages, I leaned heavely on my husband for peeks behind the boy curtain and learned things like, No, they would not have a talk after punching each other and, Yes, he probably would have sex with her, even though he was in love with someone else.

That draft gleaned some really important and humanizing information about Jack. Until then, he’d pretty much been perfect – too perfect many early readers said. Being able to look at life through the filter of his pain dirtied him up a bit, a theme that has been prevelant in each and every draft.

When the time was right, I got hooked up with a marvelous editor in LA who loved my characters as much as I did, and because of that agreed to work with me for free. Also because she was just starting out on the editing side – she had already published two books – and I came along around the time she needed a guinea pig. Divine Intervention! (Matthew Sweet song. Yum.)

She really pushed me. “You might want to kill me when you hear this,” she would say, and even though I would be scared, I would also be crazy excited, because I knew something was coming that was going to open another brain door I hadn’t even known was there the second prior. I would sit at my desk with my head in my hands, staring off into space while that portal opened and my entire idea of what was supposed to happen expanded. A short burst of magic mushroom awareness, if you know what I mean. Not that I know what I mean or that I would ever advocate anything you might infer from that last sentence.

We decided that all those wonderful new characters didn’t fit in this book, that it was really Iso’s story, but that the experiences Jack had while he was away from her were important and life-changing experiences that we needed to see, but not so blatently. “I think you should write some songs,” she said. “It would be a good way to see where he’s been without actually seeing where he’s been.” Even though my stomach dropped at the prospect, I was excited too. So she ended up teaching me that I was capable of writing songs. She also helped me see that still I spent too much time telling, not enough time showing and more time than anyone would ever want inside my main character’s head. I ended up changing my timeline, peppering Jack’s voice with Iso’s chronologically. I always wondered how that happened in books.

I’m losing track of drafts here. I think that brings us current. When Blythe and I sat down for coffee after she’d finished reading the book she said, “I’m going to be spending the next several weeks talking to you about Iso.” Yippee! I knew good things were coming.

What has happened with this draft is basically the same thing that has happened with all the drafts: opportunity to go deeper. I saw right away that I had only exposed Iso’s childhood insofar as it mingled with Jack’s. How silly of me! And how typical. I really like boys, in case you didn’t know. It’s easy for me to mistake obsession for depth. I needed to find out what her life was like all the other times, to write down in black and white why she became who she became.

Truthfully, I’ve been resistant to seeing what was there this whole time. I didn’t want this book to be about an absent dad. I didn’t want it to be about a crazy neglectful mom. Like I felt about myself at one point in my life, I wanted it to be about a girl who was damaged, but not by anything you could put your finger on. Now I can see that that thought is too abstract, even for me.

So I’m finding out, and it’s as thrilling as you might expect. Every once in a while I have to check with Bestie B to see if what I’m writing is what really happened, which seems like a funny thought, but she understands.