The First Step

I came up with the first sentence to Chapter 19 12 minutes ago. I've been so productive that I am now up to six sentences. I may have to lie down soon.

The great thing to me is that this first paragraph is a clue to the reader about the solution, but is not overt in any way, shape, or form. It also links it to the end of the previous chapter and is just overall a pretty keen piece of work. I'll probably end up deleting it at some point.

Such is the life of a writer.

But First--

Well, not only did I not getting any new sentences written yesterday, I actually deleted the one I had. It's time for some fresh thinking and a fresh start.

The first sentence of any piece of writing is important, whether it's the first sentence in a chapter, a story, an essay, or a confession. You want to entice the reader and lure them deeper into the chapter, story, essay, or confession until they reach the point of no return. (For great writers, that point is usually right up front. For the rest of us, it varies, with a large number never establishing such a point anywhere at any time.)

So that's my current assignment: Come up with the right opening sentence. Who knows? Maybe I'll come up with one or two more. Just another hundred or two after that, I'll move on to Chapter 20. I'll shoot up a flare when I get to it.

Occam's Razor™

I got stuck on Chapter 19 for a number of days. I wasn't even writing any of it. I had down the grand sum of one sentence. Thirteen whole words. It was dead in the water, and I wasn't sure why.

I was being stopped by a feeling, a sense that I was about to make a wrong turn down a dark and dangerous street. I switched over to writing a non-Drayton short story to pass the time. Was this the end of zombie Shakespeare? Not quite.

In a time-tested tradition, this morning I came up with the answer to my problem while showering. It was, of course, the simplest answer possible.

You know, if Roger of Ockham had trademarked Occam's Razor™, he'd be a rich man today.

One Step Closer

I finished Chapter 18 around lunchtime today and think it came out fairly well. This was a chapter that seemed to write itself, several times going in directions that I hadn't it considered going in. In fact, it actually ended differently than I had expected and put forward an important clue without coming across like an installment of Murder She Wrote.

Most surprisingly for me, it came out in a way that is going to mean that I can salvage great chunks of the next couple of chapters, at least in terms of the action and progress of the plot. The words you never know about until you're actually faced with the task of retyping them.

This is all encouraging, and while I doubt that I will be able to finish this draft by Halloween, I think there's some chance that I'll have it finished by some time in November. I doubt that it will be "done" done by then, but it should be good enough to shop around. Of course, it will never be completely done until some publisher forces me to stop with the revisions just so that they can get it to press.

Redirect

I started work on Chapter 18 a few days ago and worked like a galley slave to come up with 200 words that I wasn't satisfied with. Late yesterday, I had to admit to myself that the chapter wasn't working and that I needed to reevaluate.

I realized that the scene I was writing was completely unnecessary and just needed to be jettisoned. So, late yesterday afternoon, I started fresh with a scene I'd never had a version of before and watched in astonishment as about 250 words poured out with seeming ease.

There are sometimes when you fight with the writing, when it is terribly hard and discouraging, but you keep on and persevere because something in you knows that what you're working on is the right thing. Sometimes not so much. Sometimes the words just seem to fall out of you, like sugar out of a punctured bag. Those are the good days. And it's kind of like golf, where you can play miserably except for one good shot and that one good shot hooks you and encourages you to try it again.

Now, we'll see how today goes.

Chapter 17 Done

Okay, Chapter 17, another really short one, is done, and I think it's a distinct improvement over its antecedent. The funny thing is that it turned out to be an easier job of rewriting than Chapter 16, which started out in better shape but was torture to revise. You never know. You just never know.

The other thing that's come up is that the entire ending is changing shape on me as I revise it. New scenes, new approaches, new settings. It's exciting and disconcerting all at the same time. What I'm really doing is removing all the vestiges of the original TV movie version of it. It's still comic in spirit, but not a comedy anymore.

Rounding Up

The chapter I am currently at work on what was originally the last half of Chapter 16. Chapter 16 1/2, really. As a practical matter, I decided to round it up to Chapter 17. Easier for the bookkeeping aspect of things.

After I got a cool three sentences down yesterday, I started to rethink the entire scene. It just wasn't convincing. It wasn't working. Drayton would have had to have been nearly psychic for the action to unfold as I had it. The set up is that he realizes that Federal agents are staking out his apartment, so he engages in a bit of misdirection as a way of avoiding them.

I turned over several possibilities in my mind before stumbling on the simplest: His pal Lt. Sidwell can tip him off via a phone call. Occam's razor, I think they call it.

And now the rewriting of the rewriting begins.

Plus ça Change

Last night, I decided to look over the final chapter even though I am still some way from reaching it for revision. I'm glad I did.

I think it wasn't much of an ending, one more suited to a broad comedy than to the book it has become. I've got a few weeks to turn it over before I need to really deal with it, which is a plus, but the revision will ultimately be substantial enough that I think I might have to put that rewrite on hold for a while even then.

In the meantime, I have four chapter to rewrite, one of which (I think Chapter 17, which I am starting work on today) will include an entire scene that never existed before. That's a lot of work and all the while I'll be thinking about the damn ending.

It would be so much easier to do a crap job and probably more profitable, too. Unfortunately, I am stuck with the desire to write something worth writing and, with any luck, worth reading.

But that's the way it goes.

Chapter 16 Update

Well, so far, I spent pretty much this entire month rewriting the part of the original Chapter 16 that I had thought was decent. Now I'm getting to the part that I thought was crap. Odds are that that will turn out to be somewhat easier.

One of the things I've noticed is that I want to put a chapter break between these two sections. That will make Chapter 16 a short one, but there is no dishonor in writing a short chapter. The only dishonor is in writing a bad one.

I'd really like to put Drayton to bed by the end of October so that it doesn't make it to a fourth National Novel Writing Month, but I don't know that I'll make it. It does give me a loose goal to shoot for, though, and anything I can do to keep myself focused is worth it.

Just to Clarify

On my other blog, Next in the Series: The Blog, I mentioned that I had started work on a second novel, Such Is Life. This does not mean that I am putting Drayton aside even temporarily. Drayton is my first writing priority, and will be until this draft is done.

I'm just getting the ball rolling on Such Is Life so that I can really have some momentum going on it when I done with Drayton. I'm also going to be revising some short stories in my copious free time.

And let's not forget these fascinating blog posts. It's a full life.

The Process

The following are the revisions I talked about yesterday, from Revision 3 (which was when I actually started to write something) to 86:


It ain't easy. Just worth it.

You Don't Call, You Don't Write

Okay. I know I haven't added much to this blog since reviving it, but there is a simple reason for that: I haven't made much progress.

Except, of course, that I have. It's just that the writer often makes progress in the way that a stream makes progress on a rock or valley. You wear away at it bit-by-bit, always looking to improve it, always looking to strengthen it.

And that's what's been going on with the novel. I've been working on Chapter Sixteen and have, over the course of the last week or so, completed three paragraphs. Now, that accumulation involves a lot of backing up and reworking and rethinking and rewriting. Google documents has cataloged some 86 revisions so far, ranging from additions of text to complete reworkings of words, phrases, and sentences.

There have been more than a few deletions, as well.

And this is all on the part of Chapter 16 I thought was in good shape. It doesn't always come easily.

Like a Phoenix, Rising from the Ashes--Yech!

In a lame attempt to conform to the social strictures currently expected of those of us in the writing game, I am reviving this blog. I am doing so in lieu of registering the domain name and building a real website. The time is not quite right for that. Yet.

I am getting there, though.

Since last I posted on the Next in the Series blog about the novel, I have completed the rewrite of Chapter 14. It is slightly shorter than it had been and much more to the point. I've also introduced another character who will recur in subsequent Drayton adventures, an attorney named John Dingle. (He is a principal in the law firm of Dingle & Berry.)

It was hard work, but the chapter came out much improved.

I then marked up a copy of Chapter 15 and was delighted to find that it was actually already in decent shape and only required minor touches. Those have been completed.

I started reading Chapter 16, and was beginning to think that I would be basically off the hook for Chapters 17 through 20, when the quality sloped off sharply. As I recall, the point at which the quality went directly into the sewage system was right about at the time that I decided to enter that contest. I worked more quickly than I usually do, and it showed. Everything after about halfway through Chapter 16 can only be considered rough drafts. Very rough drafts.

And now, thanks to information that came out in Chapters 13 and 14, I have to write a whole new chapter anyway. It just never ends with these novels.

Change of Venue

From now on, all new posts having to do with the development of Michael Drayton, Detective Guy will appear on my main blog, Next in the Series: The Blog. There are already a couple of new posts, if you were so inclined.

Shading

As winter has crossfaded into spring, a mural has taken shape on a retaining wall that holds up one corner of the track outside the athletic center at the university I'm employed by. I walk by it in the morning and evening five days-a-week, and I've watched it take shape over the course of the last several months. At first, it looked horrible and amateurish, closer to graffiti than art. However, over time, each portion has been slowly filled in and out, and the aesthetic value of the piece has increased with every change.

This is the metaphor I've hit upon for my method of working. I start out with what I call "an outline in draft form." The first version is usually weak, but I get it out. I get out what happens and who is involved. I get down the lines of it, the equivalent of an artist's rough sketch, and then go back, from the top, and fill it in and out. And that's where the interesting stuff happens.

There were those who thought, when I decided to enter the contest at gather.com, that I was making a huge mistake, but I still disagree. I needed that deadline to get me to stop diddling around with individual words and phrases and start roughing out the last quarter of the book. And I did that. Now, I can go back over each chapter that needs revision and redo it the right way, having taken some time away to give me some perspective as a whole. It brought me back to the method of working that suits me best. And I have a completed draft to shop while I'm revising.

On another topic, I worked on it on Saturday as well. The new, improved chapter 11 is coming along nicely.

How I Write

I've continued to push on, making almost no use of the previous version. I've less than 600 words so far, but I think they're good ones. They're certainly better than the ones that preceded them.

What I've been able to put together is this: The method of composition that works best for me is to blat out a draft, put it aside for awhile, and then revise from scratch. I got lucky with a couple of chapters in the first half of Drayton, and only had to do some minor polishing on the first drafts, but those proved to be the exceptions. As I look back over the 33 years I've been writing seriously, that's always been the way. At least it has for the stuff that worked the best.

I think this method allows me to deal with all the mundane stuff--what happens next and where, who's there, what do they look and sound like--so that I don't have to later. On the second draft, I can concentrate on how the words sound coming off the page and provide the depth and shading that most likely were missing from the original version.

This is a method that is not well-suited to the digital age, but that's no matter. And, at the end of the day, I have to do things in a manner that makes sense to me and not to any other.

At 47, after 33 years, I'm still learning about how I do this. Maybe that's a clue as to why I can't ever give writing up.

He's Baaaack!

Yesterday's work on Chapter 11 went well. I didn't get a lot of wordage--only about three paragraphs from yesterday morning until after 10 last night--but the quality was there. The voice of Drayton is back. After a long, lonely period, he's speaking to me again.

He went on vacation while I was writing the first draft, but is apparetly back, tanned and rested. Let me give you idea of the difference.

In the draft of Chapter 11, the first paragraph was :

I awoke the next morning to the music of someone pounding his fist on the door to my apartment. I had fallen asleep the night before in my recliner as I watched TV. The channel that had been playing “Green Acres” when I left consciousness was now showing an infomercial for exercise equipment. Times change.

That's all right, but it now reads:

I awoke the next morning to the music of someone pounding on the door of my apartment. I was asleep in the recliner in the living room when the sound stunned me awake. The TV was on. The channel that had been showing Green Acres seemingly moments before was now showing a bright, bubbly, and cheerless infomercial for a no-money-down real estate scam. A tanned man in a polo shirt and a pale woman in a sundress shilled themselves smugly in blistering seaside sunlight, and I wondered when Professor Marvel was going to appear with the patent medicine.

That's Drayton.

Revised Expectations

I've started just this morning revising the chapters of the book that didn't get a thorough going over before. I'm starting with Chapter 11 and pushing on to the end.

This is the part of the writing process in which word processing programs are supposed to be the greatest help, but I find them to be the greatest hindrance. So I am actually retyping the entire chapter, sentence-by-sentence, and reworking it as thoroughly as I can.

In other news, I'm up to my third query of an agent. How many am I willing to query before I stop sending it out? I'm not sure, but it's a lot. But lets all hope that number three turns out to be the smart one.

The Latest

I submitted an email query to an agent on Thursday and got back a rejection within an hour-and-a-half. (He promised fast service, and that's what I got.) That really didn't bother me. It was something of a practice run anyway, although I would have gladly signed a contract had one been offered.

Yesterday, I mailed a query with sample pages to another agent. I should hear back within the month.

More updates, as warranted, will be posted here, your one-stop shop for Drayton news.

The Contest Is Over--For Me at Least

Michael Drayton, Detective Guy did not make the cut in the contest over at Gather.com. Twenty semi-finalists were chosen yesterday, leaving Drayton, I'm sure, at position 21 or maybe 27. So close and yet so far. I got the impression that all the semi-finalists are genre-friendly potboilers, something which Drayton certainly is not, and since the imprint that all this is directed toward, Touchstone/Fireside, specializes in genre-friendly potboilers, that is all well and good.

Be of good cheer, though. All is not lost. I have already sent a query to an agent. At the very least, this contest gave me a solid deadline to shoot for, and I made it with a reasonable draft left behind for my troubles. The current version isn't perfect--the last half needs a thorough rewrite--but the story is in place with enough good writing along the way to show that I can write somewhat. And whether this first agent bites or whether it takes 100 queries to find somebody, I'll keep on. It's really that good.