In a previous post, “In the Beginning…“, I discussed how the concept for An Uncertain Peace originated in a coffee shop in Mobile, Alabama. That step was crucial; it gave me a goal. However, it did not give me a plan for writing the novel. I thought it did, but it didn’t. To use an analogy, the decision to drive to Chicago does not automatically provide a route to Chicago. As I began writing, I kinda sorta had a general idea of the plot, and I knew who some of the main characters were. There was little else. Despite having written numerous nonfiction pieces on art and artists, I was in the dark about how to manage a novel.
Years ago, during my college days, I had a girlfriend who used to say to me, “You never win at first, but you always win at last.” It may have been her way of saying I was a bit slow, but I always felt she was acknowledging that what I lack in intuitive brilliance, I make up for with tenacity. I usually finish what I start. So, having no idea of how to write a novel, I began at the beginning and battled my way to the end. Through page after page, I pursued good ideas and I pursued bad ideas, not knowing which was which. To return to my previous analogy, I drove to Chicago by trying one road after another to see where they led.
Eventually, I arrived, but what did I have when I got there? I had a bloated manuscript of approximately 125,000 words, perhaps more, filled with far too much exposition, numerous historical asides (what a shame to waste all that research), and an overabundance of minor characters. There were passages of ‘fine’ writing inserted to dazzle the reader. Granted, there was some solid dialogue in places, but much was wooden or pointlessly clever.
Still, I had accomplished something. I had completed a piece of long fiction. For all its flaws, and there were many, that draft was an important point of demarcation. It’s been my experience that the writing world is filled with dreamers and planners—people who don’t write, but endlessly prepare to write. There’s a reason for that. A first draft is hard. It is filled with disappointment and is a veritable petri dish of frustration. Ideas that seemed brilliant in the abstract turn out to be silly or contrived on the page. But those who only plan avoid that. Describing their ‘vision’ provides them with something to impress their friends. It seems that for many wannabe writers, that is enough–but maybe not for long. With the advent of AI, I imagine we will see, or are already seeing, ‘novels’ artificially generated from that planning. I rue the day.
Whatever one might say about that first draft, misshapen creature that it was, it did, in a sense, stand the test of time. At least bits of it did. Despite innumerable edits, certain aspects remained unchanged. Some of the best dialogue and most effective narrative passages in the published work date back to the beginning. Not very many, I’ll grant you, but they are there.
There was also an intangible advantage to my reckless approach. I wrote with a freewheeling spirit unencumbered by fear of doing things incorrectly. The superpower of the ignorant is that they are not confused by alternatives. They just do it. That sort of enthusiasm was baked into my early manuscript. When I was at my best, the writing had an organic quality that communicated exactly what I intended. Over successive drafts, I tried to build on that, all the while cutting again and again.
There is an old saying that movies are made in the cutting room; all the raw footage only comes to life with editing. So it is with a novel. But the story of shaping and honing a mass of words written in an attempt to ‘just get it down’ is a tale for another day.