On scene 50 of 98. “Finished for now” pages are on the top shelf of the stacked shelves, finished scene notecards below and cut-up pages of old manuscript under that. I am the queen of cut-and-tape this revision. Pages not yet started on are on the bottom, with the remaining scene cards above them (look, part of the shelf is empty!). “Blank” pages are in the center. I’ve gone through 257 of the 417 first-draft pages; the final scenes are shorter than the early scenes, but there’s also a lot of new writing coming up.

(p.s. comment if you want to see the whole, gory work area!)

Below is the current work-table. “Finished for now” pages are on the top shelf of the stacked shelves; pages not yet started on are on the bottom , scrap paper, notebook paper, and cards fill the rest. Today’s count: 21 finished, 390 not finished, scene 4 in progress.

In the foothills of the mountain, looking up, up, up. Wish me luck!

WHEN full sedition’s stalking through the land,
It then behoves each patriotic band
     Of Noble Minded Yeomen Cavaliers;
To sally forth and rush upon the mob,
And execute the Magisterial Job
     Of cutting off the Ragamuffin’s ears.

HOW valiantly we met that crew
Of infants, men and women too,
Upon the Plain of Peterloo,
And gloriously did hack and hew
     The d—–d reforming gang;
Our swords were sharp you may suppose,
Some lost their ears—some lost a nose,
Our horses trod upon their toes
E’re they could run t’ escape our blows,
     With shrieks the welkin rang.

— from “ ‘The Renowned Atchievements of Peter-Loo’ by Sir Hugo Burlo Furioso Di Mulo Spinissimo, BART. M.Y.C. and A.S.S.,” which I found at the Manchester Education Wide Area Network site. Here’s a direct link to the full lyrics.

This desk forms the new “fiction corner.” The old desk and closet have been transformed into my work office now that my office office has closed, and it’s easier for me to keep my day job and my night job separate if I am in a separate space while I’m doing them. This has made the room where I keep all this stuff rather cozy. The notes on the left, in the photo below, are taped to the back of a bookshelf.

Here I am going scene by scene through the first draft, comparing it with the new outline (propped up on the right) and reviewing all the plot, scene, setting, conflict, and character notes I’d taken, as well as the actual manuscript (in front). This part took the night shifts over three days (and counting).

The sharp new ideas I was getting during the weekend continued to flow, so I changed some stuff on the fly. I expect more will change in the next few weeks, as I go through the remaining steps to sharpen the characters and make sure every scene has conflict and is driving the story forward.

After I figured out how much would need to change in each scene, I wrote new, color-coded cards, one for each scene. Red is for massive change or a new scene altogether, orange shows one major part is changing but much remains the same, yellow a little less change, and green is for scenes that don’t need much structural change at all. Usually I keep them on a ring (unless I’m shuffling them around); here I spread them out to get a big-picture reading. Scene One is on the left; Scene 93 on the right.

First off, as usual, I began in the wrong place in the story, so it’s all red cards to start. First draft was in summer, with my heroine on her way to a house party; now it’s winter and she’s going to a very small social gathering. I was a little surprised to make this same mistake; I’d done a lot of plotting and character play, and roughed out a pretty-solid sentence-for-scene outline before I started. Que sera sera.

A lot of the red also is thanks to a new, kicking antagonist, who sort of amalgamated himself out of three mildly antagonistic characters in draft one. He is an excellent and formidable foe, but that meant that any scene with the old antagonist or with one of the two other characters in it became at least an orange card, and usually red.

BUT, good news, the middle looks pretty solid. In the past couple of manuscripts, the second and third acts have been textbook examples of “sagging middle syndrome,” where the plot meanders and the characters just talk, talk, talk until the events of the climactic ending finally get rolling. No such problem here, though you can see that my antagonist change has led to a clump of reds at the second turning point. So here the initial rough outline seems to have helped me as I barreled through the NaNoWriMo “just-get-it-down-on-the-page” first-draft marathon.

And then we get to the end, which involves the same time and mostly the same events, but still has massively changed. I realized my people were too passive, riding the waves of major changes and reacting to them but not making any waves themselves. Boring! So I rethought the kind of people they would be and what kind of choices they would make earlier in the story (like around that second turning point) that would roll down the hill and make big boulders crashing here in the fourth act. Now I’m thinking this story could be a real tear-jerker; I might make it a goal to make the reader cry. Twice. For different reasons.

This is a lot of work, and I felt a little bummed when I saw all that red. But this second draft is already so much better a story, I can’t wait to tell it (in the evenings, after I do my day job). The goal with all this analysis, pages, and cards, is to get the story where I want it in one step: a “one-pase revise.” I’m following the system devised by writer Holly Lisle, who is far more organized than me–and far, far more prolific.

I wasn’t as analytical or organized when I revised my other stories, and they went through draft after draft after draft. I think one of them lost all hint of energy from being reworked so many times, and when one of my beta readers reacted to a certain part in one draft, I couldn’t remember if that part was still in my current revision. And it was a sword fight!

Because this one has so many red cards, I’m pretty sure there will be a third draft, but if I can get this one structurally sound, then the third draft can be a quick edit and polish, and I’m still ahead of the game. My goal is to have this ready to submit by December.

How the reading is going: Not well. My head is full of multiple scene possibilities, and I haven’t kept up on my reading. I did get through HOUSEKEEPING, by Marilynne Robinson, which I have opinions about I may share soon, and I got swept into the “Song of Fire and Ice” saga, after reading A GAME OF THRONES for class. Next book-club book: THE POISONWOOD BIBLE by Barbara Kingsolver.

But I have never thought that traits that are strong in childhood disappear; they may go underground or they may be transmuted into something else, but they do not vanish; very often they make a vigorous appearance after the meridian of life had been passed. It is this, and not senility, that is the real second childhood. … As we neared our sixties the cloaks we had wrapped about our essential selves were wearing thin.
(THE DEPTFORD TRILOGY, 1970, Penguin 1990, p. 233)

And Davies gets off so many great lines:

A boy is a man in miniature, and though he may sometimes exhibit notable virtue, as well as characteristics that seem to be charming because they are childlike, he is also schemer, self-seeker, traitor, Judas, crook, and villain—in short, a man. (p. 3)

But before Paul’s birth, he had loved her because she was the blood of his heart; now he seemed to love her on principle. (p. 38)

After the marathon reading, and a great discussion during book club, I find the lure of the next two books in the series, THE MANTICORE and WORLD OF WONDERS, nearly irresistable. Especially intriguing is the idea that the next book has a different narrator, so we readers will see old scenes (and the first narrator) in different lights. What luxury!

But my new year’s resolve has not yet slaked, and I know first I must finish the second half of NORTH AND SOUTH, by Elizabeth Gaskell. The story is set very close to the time I set my latest work-in-progress, and she uses the same great reportorial eye and style she did in MARY BARTON, which is set earlier. I’d gleaned great ideas and details and modes of speech from the first half of N&S, but somehow had stalled out on reading it. I blamed holiday travel and a fierce dive into first revisions (for story) on my WIP, but opening it again, I remember the real reason. She is just too good.

“You think it strange. Why?”
“I don’t know—I suppose because, on the very face of it, I see two classes dependent on each other in every possible way, yet each evidently regarding the interests of the other as opposed to their own: I never lived in a place before where there were two sets of people always running each other down.” (NORTH AND SOUTH, 1855, Norton Critical Edition 2005, p. 109)

Gaskell also shows raw emotions expressed through action, as in the so-painful scene where Margaret turns down Mr. Thornton’s offer of marriage (pp. 174-8). And, the part that makes my head spin, she’s writing contemporary, not historical, fiction.

The darkness of January descends: I can’t match this historical accuracy, this raw emotion, I shouldn’t even try. I should write about my own time; after all, the themes I’m working are resonant now. But my attempts at contemporary have been clumsy, and I’m so slow that neither of the two contemporary manuscripts I’ve finished works for plot now: In one, the woman is a reporter in a style that was true when I was a reporter, all of five years ago, but isn’t true now; in the other, written four years ago, the protagonist invents a new app on the computer that somebody real invented two years ago. But if I want to say anything “real,” and be believed, I should do it in my own time.

I know the counter-arguments, and I have good reasons for writing historical (like I do want to write about Peterloo), but in the darkest days of the year, these arguments feel ephemeral. And there’s a snowstorm, so I have to shovel. And N&S sits unread.

And then my company announces it is closing its only office in town and laying off nearly all of us. So I flee.

I land in the last Kurt Wallander book by Henning Mankell I haven’t read, BEFORE THE FROST. This too, is an alternate-view story: Wallander as seen and felt from his daughter Linda’s point of view. She describes his hair-trigger anger, and we see it reflected in her own expressions of anger. I especially enjoyed how she resolves her childhood impressions of him with how she sees him working as a detective, and how she tries to resolve her choice to become a police officer with what has come before. Other father-daughter relationships in the book trace other trajectories. As always, I wonder how much I miss because this is translated.

Done with that, and still skirting N&S (which continues to travel back and forth to work in the messenger-bag), I glom onto AMERICAN GODS by Neil Gaiman. He’s been in the news, and in love, and I remember he does that hyper-real detail thing even in the stories that carry a lot of fantasy, as well as solid storytelling, and the book has been on my shelf forever and is recommended by the spouse (who says read ANANSI BOYS right away after). And, like Davies, this story wonders at why people want marvels, how they create their own marvels, and how people who feed them their marvels fare. Fun read, watching the stories told and re-told, and seeing how a longer form can carry a lot of short-story structure (like history passages that don’t slow the main narrative drive), you just have to remember to wrap it up better at the end.

So I’m cruising along and bam—on p. 99—he uses the word “manticore,” which is, you’ll remember, book 2 of the Deptford trilogy. It’s a Sign, so I seek out our copy of the trilogy, but spouse is deep into it and won’t give it up and aren’t I supposed to be reading N&S? Fine. I return to AG, and enjoy the “that’s my life!” references to the northern midwest (pasties, yoopers, those sports-team signs) as well as references to the potential that “It’s a Wonderful Life” could be a depressant and – hello – references to brain science:

She chewed a hangnail. “I read some book about brains,” she said. “My roommate had it and she kept waving it around. It was like, how five thousand years ago the lobes of the brain fused and before that people thought that when the right lobe of the brain said anything it was the voice of some god telling them what to do. It’s just brains.”
…
“I bet it’s like the space aliens,” she said. “These days, people see space aliens. Back then they saw gods. Maybe the space aliens come from the right side of the brain.”
“I don’t think the gods ever gave rectal probes,” said Shadow.
(AMERICAN GODS, Harper 2001, p. 133)

Soon enough, I’m through the book and dashed if it isn’t another snowpocalypse outside, saving me the trouble of immediately deciding which follow-up book to read (N&S is now under a pillow on the living room couch). This morning, no newspaper delivery so we’re reading books at breakfast, and the spouse shouts and chortles several times as he finishes WORLD OF WONDERS. “You must read this now,” he says, “so I can talk about it.”

But first, just one little chapter of N&S.

After I clear some more snow.

How the writing is going: Stuck in pre-revision molasses, but better to slowly look at everything now than rush like last time and discover my “fixes” messed up the plot. Ran through all the pages looking for plot points that don’t pay off, then noting characters that have too much or too little weight. This week I look at locations and setting.

Next book-club book: HOUSEKEEPING, by Marilynne Robinson

Meanwhile, while resting my fingers, I had to play this video for everyone in the house. Great line: “She put my head and whole camera in her mouth, and did these threat displays, but then the most amazing thing happened…” “Threat displays” is a mild way to put it. I also liked that she brought progressively deader prey to show him what’s what.

According to NaNoWriMo’s blog, 2008 posted an all-time-high win rate (18.2 percent of 119,301 registrants hit the magic 50,000-word mark) with a record-smashing number of words written (1.6 billion). This year, site traffic and participant sign-ups are tracking ahead of 2008. Could we top 2 billion words? Only with your help…
www.nanowrimo.org

“I was startled. I did not know that you cared for me in that way. I have always thought of you as a friend; and, please, I would rather go on thinking of you so. I don’t like to be spoken to as you have been doing. I cannot answer as you want me to do, and yet I should feel so sorry if I vexed you.”
(From NORTH AND SOUTH (1855) Norton critical edition 2005, p. 58)

She is just as direct about what she as a southern stranger sees in the northern town of Manchester, as the city girds for a factory-workers’ strike:

“You think it [Manchester society] strange. Why?”

“I don’t know—I suppose becaue, on the very face of it, I see two classes dependent on each other in every possible way, yet each evidently regarding the interests of the other as opposed to their own; I never lived in a place before where there were two sets of people always running each other down.”
(NORTH AND SOUTH, p. 109)

While “vexed” may date the first extract, there’s nothing in the wording that would make you think it was written more than 150 years ago. And it’s just as true now, feels just as impossible, and just as sad.
This story wasn’t deep history to Gaskell; hers is a “contemporary novel.” Reading it challenges me to see if I can write such a clear commentary on my own times. After my first couple of manuscripts came out so flat, I decided I couldn’t, and my next ones and this new NaNo one I’ve planned are set as historicals. They still treat common themes (meaning of family, definition of home, roles of women, one’s place and duty to one’s society) that are relevant in my times, but at a safe distance.

Maybe it’s time to try for currency as well as relevance again. Or maybe this is just cold-feet-just-as-the-writing-project-starts pondering; a familiar refrain. We’ll see how I feel on the backside of a month of novelwriting frenzy.

p.s. Our bookclub read this month was BREATH, EYES, MEMORY by Edwidge Danticat. Lovely but slight, it read to me like a lyrical series of short stories with not much sinew between. A great voice, and another story of generations of women struggling and surviving, as in our previous reads, HOUSE OF SPIRITS and BRIEF, WONDEROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO.

Next month (Dec.): MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie.

And you?