In order to provide some encouragement for all those would be novelists struggling to come up with exactly the right word I thought I’d post some various drafts of my soon to be published novel The Vagabond King. So, if you are ready, get ready to watch how some really bad writing gets a lot better.
Here is the first page of my 5th draft.
It was an age. It was an age of great confusion. In one hundred years the world had changed more than in all of Human history.
In one hundred years, a quick tick of the clock, the world had gone from sailing the untamable seas in wooden ships to navigating the cosmos itself. But, there was no longer a star in the sky for a sailor to guide by. For it was a fatherless age, an age conceived in the philosophy that God is dead, and the world was come to the place where cartographers were once tradition bound to write “here there be monsters”.
It was as if Columbus, overestimating his horizon, had pushed further and further beyond the boundaries of human limitation and sailed off the edge of the world, plunging into chaos. For, as the boundaries of human limitation expanded and then dissolved before our eyes, the world began to shrink and the boundaries of our universe no longer extended past the confines of our own individual skins. Right and wrong no longer existed except to be determined by the individual just as he chose a favorite color or a shirt to wear. For what was true yesterday was no longer true today.
What was true yesterday was no longer true today.
This is what I discovered shortly before my mother died of cancer. What was true yesterday was no longer true today.
She let me in on, what she referred to as “a little secret”. You see, she told me from her hospital bed, you are not who you have always thought yourself to be. You are not really your father’s son. They had never told me because, she said, my father, the man I had considered to be my father, did not want me to know. He wanted to keep the truth of my own existance hidden from me.
“You are at that age”, she said. “You are at that age when you want to start becoming a man”. That, she said, is why she told me.
And so the scene opens, so the story begins shortly after I had left my father’s house, vowing never to return, as I stood knocking on the door, seeking a place to live, of a woman I had met only weeks before.
These were lonely times for me. My mother was dead and ever since my she had fallen ill I had been neglected almost completely by my father.
He had expensive tastes: a palacial house in an exclusive subdivision, designer suits and luxery automobiles. But, now, without my mother’s income, he was financially over extended.
So, each day after school, while my father worked late so that he would not lose the level of status and regal lifestyle he demanded, I was left alone to wander down marble halls and beneath cathedral ceilings, while the sun sank beyond the distant edge of the world and the shadows crept like wolves from the corners of the lifeless house, through room after room until my father returned dragging his troubles, like a tail, behind him.
It was as if I had been swept into the corner with all the dustballs and ignored as life passed me by.
Without the placative presence of the mother, the father and the son had grown distant and edgy. As I got older I spoke less and less to my father and he spoke less and less to me. It was as if we were two primal and opposing energies that, if we happened to cross each other in the silent halls of the house, would erupt in anger.
Silence and avoidance were my only two weapons in my ongoing struggle with my father. As the silence became more dense and dangerous the battle became more threatening and vile. It was as if it were an unwritten challenge, complete with gauntlet and slap in the face, that one must vanquish the other.
As you can see, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I had a bunch of ideas floating around but I didn't exactly know how to weave them into a story. These ideas would eventually become maajor themes in the book. However, at this point I am just trying to portray them in a lump sum. Now, let’s fast forward 10 drafts and take a look at how the first page looks for draft 15.
Vast, black and ever expanding, a universe without center or circumference spins round me like some scratched and skipping record, some scratched and scratched and skipping record spinning round a central pin.
The present was not here long enough to consider, we already existed in the future…
Within one hundred years, a quick tick of the clock, a quick tick of the clock indeed we have named the volcanic mountains of Mars and discovered the frozen oceans of Jupiter’s moons as we have gone from sailing the watery oceans in wooden ships to navigating the celestial seas beyond.
Ours is a world of relentlessly expanding technological advancement and with each fleeting moment those ancient dreams and antique aspirations grow as quaint and passé as the belief in a God who rules the Earth from his heavenly throne.
We have become as the very gods themselves. For, with our knowledge of science we can split atoms, create life and manipulate genders. With each rocket we send ripping through the atmosphere and each satellite we send sailing past the stars, we transcend the cross of time and space to which we had, for so long, been crucified.
But, even as the boundaries of our universe expand and shrink from sight like passing islands in a spyglass, my soul is shrinking and collapsing in upon itself like a dying star.
“The world we live in is completely different from the world our ancestors lived in.” Magda said as she sat on a stool behind the counter thumbing through a well-worn paperback edition of a work by Nietzsche.
The diner in which I sat each night shone like a lonely jewel in the darkness that surrounded it. Beyond our world a hundred billion galaxies each with a hundred billion stars, countless other worlds with countless other realities and countless other truths floated like occasional islands in an even more infinite ocean of nothingness. Our world had been unmoored and cut adrift like a ship upon the black and rolling waves of some vast and uncharted ocean. Thrown by chance and the powers that be, we were sitting on a skipping stone and fear, not confidence, increased with the ripples of uncertainty, forever expanding outward through the universe.
“Modern man no longer has a standard by which to judge. Right and wrong no longer exist except to be determined by the individual just like you choose a favorite color or a shirt to wear.”
Each night, as she moved through the diner taking orders and clearing plates, she reminded me of a jungle cat I saw once as a boy at the zoo pacing back and forth, back and forth; sleek, fluid, sexual, seeking release behind the bars of a cage. Occasionally she would stop and bend or twist so that the fabric between the buttons of her pink polyester uniform would pucker and reveal to my eager adolescent eyes a glimpse of the black lace mysteries contained within. Oh, I imagined the plastic buttons of her blouse melting like butter between the heat of my fingers and, each time she caught me staring, she would widen her dark, feline eyes at me before curling her lips into a cruel little grin that sent a shiver through my bones and set me off like a seismograph.
“The boundary of a person’s universe no longer extends past their skin.”
No longer was there a star in the sky for a sailor to guide by. Like Columbus, sailing further and further from the safety of the known world we had overestimated our horizon only to find that fabled place, the edge of the world, where cartographers in ancient times were tradition bound to write, “here there be monsters.”
As you can see I am still struggling with how to portray the confusion of the age which I wanted to serve as the setting for the adolescent confusion of the main character. (Unfortunately, the writer was just as confused as the character he wanted to portray). It seems like the only advance I had made was to introduce Magda, the love interest at the beginning of the book. I had numerous themes I knew I needed to portray but I just didn't know how to weave them together.And, this is ten drafts later.
I remember feeling so frustrated. I had this story that I knew must be told but I still couldn’t figure out how to tell it. I was absolutely certain that other writers would just whip their stories out in 2-3 drafts and be done with it. But, then I heard George Lucas say that he went through something like twenty drafts for one of his Star Wars movies. So, let’s fast forward almost ten more drafts to the 24th and final.
The morning after my mother’s death, I was surprised to see the sunrise. From behind the curtain of my bedroom window I was surprised to see the people leave their homes and begin the day. Downstairs, the hands of the grandfather clock continued to tick, marking each passing hour with a chime that echoed over the black and white chessboard tiles of the front hall. I was surprised to see the mail come at the same time as the day before and, later that evening, the sun set once more as it did since the beginning of time. My mother’s death did not disturb the planets in their courses. And, though everything kept moving like she never existed at all, my world erupted into chaos until the universe swirled around me like a whirlpool of scattering stars.
“The Egyptians buried their dead with what they needed in the afterlife, and instructions to help them find their way.” Magda said.
Each night, she moved through the diner taking orders and clearing plates. She reminded me of a jungle cat I saw once as a boy pacing back and forth, back and forth; sleek, fluid, sexual, seeking release behind the bars of a cage. Occasionally she stopped to bend or twist so that the fabric between the buttons of her pink polyester uniform puckered and revealed to my eager adolescent eyes a glimpse of the black lace mysteries contained within. Oh, I imagined the plastic buttons of her blouse melting like butter between the heat of my fingers and, each time she caught me staring, she widened her dark, feline eyes at me before curling her lips into a cruel little grin that sent a shiver through my bones and set me off like a seismograph.
She was very well-read and, over time I learned that, though she worked as a waitress for many years, she had a college degree in philosophy. Late at night, when I was her only customer, she spent her idle time reading on a stool behind the counter. She was interested in everything from ancient history to modern astronomy and, though I was afraid to talk to her at first, she was very friendly and, like Sheherezade, she entertained me with stories from her latest readings.
“Throughout the ages, whether it was the chariot of an Egyptian prince or the frying pan of a Mississippi slave, the dead were never buried without the things they needed in the other life.”
But many people told me many things and, as I sat with my father in the front pew of St. Columban’s Catholic Church, listening to the priest talk about how sin was the source of death, they all ran together and swirled around me like a whirlpool down a drain.
Ah, finally! I figured out a way to introduce the death of the main character's mother and the confusion of the world around him. But I don't feel as if I have to do it all at once. As you can see I have eliminated a lot of the ideas that I had regurgitated on to the page in previous drafts. The ideas are not actually eliminated; they still exist as themes that run throughout the novel. However, I have finally achieved a sense of pacing. I think that a lot of new writers struggle with this. It is not necessarily something you can teach. It is more nuanced than the difference between a 1st person and 3rd person narrator.
I won't tell you how long it took me to get from draft 1 to draft 24, but it was a long time. So, if you are feeling frustrated with how long your novel is taking, don’t. It will take as long as it takes. This is not the first time this has ever happened, it is just the first time it has happened to you. You will get to the end, just keep plugging away.
