Writing is Hard Work

Yeah, I know the title of this is a bit of a whine. It's also the God's honest truth. Writing is hard. Beginning to end, soup to nuts, it is hard work and it never ends. Not if you care about what you've written.

I suppose that once something is published, thrown out the window into the Big World of Readers, you could call it done. But it's not. There's a second edition, a third, usually including revisions. Things noted and commented on by readers, or picky things the author thinks about. It's never done but, in my opinion, the very hardest thing about writing is knowing what’s important and what isn’t.

Some things in a story advance it. They get and keep the reader's interest. Some things are, bluntly, fat.

To me, the greatest skill a writer can develop is being able to see where the fat lies and to know how to trim it without taking out so much that what you’re writing loses its flavor. Developing that skill is HARD. It takes practice and more practice and a willingness to realize that what you have written isn't perfect. It's called 'killing your darlings' for good reason.

I got started working on Genevieve’s Piano again. It's been almost a year since I set it aside to work on other things and it is amazing to see how far my writing skills have come in that time.

What I thought was really good a year ago really isn’t that good at all. It’s not bad or terrible, it’s just not good. It's not the best it can be.

For one thing, there are too many 'He' and 'I' driven actions. It's a story told in the first person, from Jean's perspective. The open is... Oh, heck, here's what I came up with yesterday:

* * * * *

Drawing up at the metal box in front of the gates I stopped and rolled down my window. Movement in my side view mirror caught my eye. What? Surprise turned my entire body to look back at the car that had pulled up behind me. What is he doing here? Where was he last night?

Before I could turn back and open the door, he was out of his car, stalking toward me. The expression on his face gave clear warning that should have made me react. I didn’t.

He stopped, grabbed the door handle and jerked, rocking the entire car. “Fuck!” Reaching through the open window, he pulled up on the cylinder then opened the door, flinging it wide with such force I was surprised it didn’t fly off its hinges. As it was, it slammed against the pole and metal housing of the keypad.  The metal pierced the skin of the door, holding it open.

“What are you doing?” Fear made me lean away, toward the passenger side.

He didn’t answer, just grabbed my arm and tried to wrench me from the seat. Only my seatbelt kept me from slamming into the half-open car door and falling to the ground.

“Dan! You’re hurting me! What’s wrong with you?”

Still no answer and I finally did act, pulling back, trying to tear my arm from his vice-like grip. He pulled again, and I cried out at the shock that shot through my upper body.

“You are not going anywhere!” He fumbled with the seatbelt release.

We wrestled for control of my arm while tears filled my eyes. “Are you drunk?  Where were you last night?”

“It’s none of your damned business where I was.” It was a snarl as the latch released and he threw the strap out of the way. “And you are not going anywhere, you got that?”

Freed, nothing held me in relative safety. He tugged again and I fell from the car with another shriek of pain as my foot caught under the brake pedal, my shin scraped down the threshold of the door opening, and my free hand and knees hit the gravel paving.

“Dan!”

As he dragged me farther from the car, toward the open lawn in front of Win's estate, I no longer cared about my arm. I feared for my life and fought harder.

He flung me from him, the force of his throwing motion so strong it felt like my arm had torn from the socket.

I screamed as I hit the ground, fighting the nausea of pain.

Rushing forward, his leg swung back.

Instinct raised my hands to cover my face and head as I rolled. It wasn’t far enough or fast enough. The toe of his boot caught me under the ribs. An earthquake ripped through me. Pain and an explosion of air from my lungs accompanied a sharp cracking sound muffled by my skin and my clothes. Wild with terror, I scrabbled at the ground with the one hand that still worked, struggled to roll farther away, fighting more to breathe.

I didn’t even ask what was wrong, why he was doing this. Staring up at him, I did not recognize the hideous being behind the eyes that burned with hatred so hot it scalded my soul from nearly six feet away. This wasn’t Dan, my husband.

The foot swung forward in another sharp, short arc.

An instinctive twitch and shift of my body kept it from making contact with my head. Instead, my already injured shoulder exploded in another, more powerful blast of agony. Frantic, sobbing, I rolled again.

He kicked out a third time.

I jerked my head back and away as the toe of his boot caught my other shoulder, just below my chin. There was another cracking sound and shrieking explosion. I screamed, twisting away again. My movement and cry of pain angered him still more.

He launched himself at me, raining fists and feet in blow after blow after blow. His mouth moved as he screamed things I could not understand in a stream of invective that bounded off the walls that lined the silent street.

But it wasn't silent. Someone was screaming. It was a woman, frantically begging the man beating the woman who lay helpless on the ground to stop. The oddest thing was that I recognized the voice. It was mine.

* * * * *
So that's from yesterday. This is what I had before this:

* * * * *

When I drew up at the metal box in front of the gates and rolled down my window to enter the code, I was startled when Dan’s car abruptly pulled in behind mine.  Before I could react, he stalked up to my car and tried to yank the door open but it had automatically locked itself.  Swearing viciously, he reached through the open window, pulled up on the cylinder and jerked the door open with such force I was surprised it didn’t fly off its hinges.  As it was, it slammed against the pole and metal housing of the keypad.  The metal pierced the skin of the door, holding it open.

Dan reached inside, grabbed my arm and tried to wrench me out of the seat.  A burning, tearing sensation ripped through my shoulder.  I cried out at the sudden shocking pain of it while only my seatbelt kept me from slamming into the half-open car door and falling to the ground.

“You are not going anywhere!”  He shouted as he fumbled with the seatbelt release.

“What are you doing, Dan?”  I cried, trying to pull away from him as the seatbelt let go its grip, “Are you drunk?  Where were you last night?”

“It’s none of your damned business where I was.”  He snarled as he jerked the seatbelt strap out of the way.  “And you’re not going anywhere, you got that?”

He was like some maddened wild creature, clearly almost beyond the edge of control.  Instinctively I sensed that anything I said or did was likely to send him over the edge on which he teetered and I wasn’t at all sure what would happen then.  Ignoring the terrible pain that lit up my shoulder, back and upper arm, sick with fear, I tried harder to pull away from him.  Desperately I thought I might be able scramble past the center console, stick shift and steering wheel to seek some momentary refuge in the relatively sheltered passenger seat.

With the seatbelt freed, he yanked me from behind the wheel and started dragging me toward his car.  Frightened, I fought against him, struggled to get away, scrabbled with the fingers of my right hand at the vice-like hand holding my left wrist while I pulled back against the forward momentum.  He jerked harder, wrenching my injured shoulder most excruciatingly as I began to fall forward.  The pain of it caused me to cry out again.  Abruptly, what I had most feared happened.  He fell off the edge of rationality into the abyss.

Flinging me to the ground, he viciously kicked out at me.  The toe of his boot caught me under the ribs.  The shock of incredible pain, the whoosh of air from my lungs accompanied a sharp cracking sound muffled by my skin and my clothes.  Wild with terror, I struggled to roll away, struggling more to breathe, terrified by what this man, a man to whom I had been married for more than two decades, had suddenly become.  I stared up at him, not recognizing the being behind the eyes that burned with hatred so hot it scalded my soul from nearly six feet away.

The foot swung forward in another sharp, short arc, but an instinctive twitch and shift of my body kept it from making contact with my head.  Instead, my already injured shoulder exploded in another more powerful blast of agony.  Frantically, I rolled again, desperate to escape his next strike.  He kicked out a third time.  I jerked my head back and away as the toe of his boot caught my other shoulder, just below my chin.  There was another cracking sound and shrieking explosion.  I screamed, twisting away again.  My movement and cry of pain angered him still more.  Before I could even think to try to get to my feet, he launched himself at me.  Fists and feet rained blow after blow after blow.  His mouth moved as he screamed things I could not understand in a stream of invective that bounded off the walls that lined the silent street.

But it wasn't silent.  Someone was screaming.  It was a woman, frantically begging the man beating the woman who lay helpless on the ground to stop.  The oddest thing about that is that it was my voice.

* * * * *

In my opinion, the new version is much better, stronger than the previous. I decreased description, got rid of adverbs, eliminated redundancy and tightened it up overall.

I also separated the characters - giving each their own moment in the sun by paragraph. The scene is the same, the description is largely the same, but the new version works better, in my opinion.

And that effort, going from old to new through the entire chapter (which goes on a little longer than what's here) took me the better part of four hours. Every action was reviewed and considered, pictured and described. The placement of each phrase within the sentence, which word do I use? Is it redundant, have I used it before in here? Do the actions flow logically, can I shorten it, make it stronger?

As I said, it is hard work but the difference between the two is, I think, worthwhile. That is most of chapter one. It's the main piece. Chapter two is changing even more. I have so much description of her injuries in it, it drags. From there, I have nearly 100,000 more words, a couple of dozen chapters, and if each takes as much time as this...

Best not to think of that. I might get discouraged!

After this is where the decision making process really gets going. The physical injuries, broken everything, set up the rest of the story, so they're important. Detailing them is needed, but it's a fine line between enough to make it clear why what happens, happens, and not going on so long it becomes one of those passages that glaze a reader's eye.

Beyond this relatively simple text revision is that I have confuddled this thing beyond recognition.

I wrote it, opening with a similar scene and then flashing back to what led to this, leading into it and continuing past. I wasn't satisfied.

I re-wrote it, starting with the hours before this scene. Too boring, nothing engaging or interesting, so I re-wrote it.

I started later, with her waking up in ICU, dropping flashbacks as I went. Boring.

Now I'm back to the beginning, the moment when the story starts, but in the meantime I have so many different versions scattered around the directory where I keep this, figuring out what goes with which and where is a nightmare.

That's my own fault, though. I didn't keep the files organized, so I have three versions of chapter one in one folder, two in another and one more in the main directory. Similar problems abound with the other chapters - a plethora of chapters scattered like confetti hours after New Year in Times Square. They're lying around like litter and I have to pick through it all to decide what to use and what to discard.

So – for anyone out there who didn’t previously appreciate just what a convoluted nightmare writing can be, there’s a lesson for you. For anyone who has tried their hand and has turned their efforts into hash as I have, you have my deepest sympathies.

Once I do get the mess unwound, I’ll consider publishing. Oh, and don’t worry. I’m persistent (read “stupid”) enough not to give up on it. It will be unwound. I just don’t know when. Maybe next year, after ‘Laurentina’s Lessons’ is released?

Hmm. I’ll have to think about it.

In the meantime, have a lovely day and a pleasant week!

Best~

Philippa

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