First-Draft Terror

Suzanne Chazin was our Guest Blogger a couple weeks ago. When I asked her for one, she sent me two. The other, describing how she starts a new novel, is a howl. Who hasn't suffered this way?

Robert Knightly

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I’m about to start the first draft of a new novel. This instills in me all the self-confidence of two virgins in a MINI Cooper. I’m sweaty and awkward. I don’t have a clue where anything goes. And I’m already questioning whether this was the right vehicle for attempting this in the first place.

I don’t know why first drafts scare me so much. It’s not as if I don’t know by now that I’ll be rewriting it all in a few months anyway. You’d think, with three published novels and a finished fourth manuscript behind me, I’d be like Larry King at the altar: ring in one pocket, attorney on speed dial in the other. I know what’s coming—the revisions, the tossed scenes, the killed characters, the discoveries I won’t make until I’m practically finished with the draft. And yet I will do almost anything to delay the process. This past week alone, I have:

1. Transferred all of my children’s baby pictures to DVD
2. Volunteered to be on the interview committee for the new principal of my daughter’s middle school
3. Filled out my bank’s customer satisfaction survey (probably a first in the history of my bank)
4. Actually listened to the Jehovah’s Witnesses who came to my door.

I’m so desperate I called up GEICO to see if I could save money on my car insurance. (Don’t let the Cockney accent fool you; the lizard is a liar).

I’m really starting to panic.

I’m stalling by researching stuff I will never, ever need to know. The Internet is great for this. I can start off with a simple question about common Honduran surnames for my new mystery series about a Latino detective in suburban New York and end up two hours later reading the history of the Indian ruler Lempira who fought the Spanish and now has the Honduran currency named after him. (Pause to reflect: would the U.S. be in any better shape if our bills were called “Geronimos”?)

My first mystery series, set in the New York City Fire Department, provided loads of fun researching how to start fires and blow up things. There is nothing like watching a video of a room turning into a solid wall of flame in under three minutes to give one an Old Testament appreciation for how fast things can go wrong. Makes that unexplained clunk in my car and the untraceable leak beneath my kitchen sink feel like good Karma by comparison.

Here’s where a well-conceived outline would come in handy. I love outlines. I really do. Wish I could write one. Typically I start out with three pages of notes for the first chapter and by chapter five, I’m down to descriptions like, “someone dies here” and “they have good sex.” (Is there any other kind in fiction?) The truth is, I just don’t know what’s going to happen until it does. I write great outlines for my second drafts. But that’s like waiting for the medical examiner when what you really needed was the doctor. It’s so much more convenient to catch the problem before the patient stops having a pulse.

I know what I have to do. I have to write something awful—something I would only show to my mother when she was alive, and only then, after she’d had a couple of glasses of good red wine. And then I have to believe that it will get much, much better as I lay down more of the story. To build a smooth road, you always have to start with a pile of rocks.

Chinese Fortune-cookie stuff, I know. But it also happens to be true. I had an art teacher at Northwestern University named George Cohen who once instructed every student to paint the “best” painting he or she could create. In the second class, Cohen asked every student to paint the “worst” painting. Then Cohen papered the room with all of our artwork and asked students to vote on the best pieces. About 75 percent of the pieces voted as “best” were the ones we had painted as our “worsts.” (Makes me wonder about my other decisions in life.)

So I will try to be fearless and not worry about what’s “best” and what’s “worst.” I will try to have faith that over time, there will be a road through the wilderness.

Then again, I could always start another blog…

Suzanne Chazin

Losing It

You will recall how a few weeks ago I declared my intention to go crazy in the service of Art, in order to better understand my protagonist's usual frame of mind. It worked pretty well, as methods go. The first draft of Monkeystorm (current working title) is just about finished. Carina has managed to elevate her craziness to the level of a superpower.

The problem with mental exercises of this sort is that they tend to distract a writer from important details of her own life. There are things I haven't been attending to. There are things, in fact, that I have out and out lost this summer. My mind may be one of them, or not, but I certainly can't find, for example, the new camera. I know we brought it back from Mississippi because I downloaded pictures.

Or my summer clothes from last year. A divine bathing suit I bought in the Florida Keys. Two pair of white jeans that fit me. That suit with the bright-colored flowers that everybody likes. Gone.

Most likely I packed the clothes away last fall and forgot where. But I've looked all over, to no avail. I tell you what. If you see some woman about my size wearing a skirted suit with big gaudy flowers and using a little black Canon digital camera to take pictures, and she isn't me, drop me an email. There may be a reward. Or my mind. If you run into my mind (I know, I know, it's too weak to get very far) hang onto it and give me a call. I'll be most grateful.

Kate Gallison

Update, Saturday morning… I found the camera just now, you'll be happy to know. In searching the house for it, however, I uncovered many levels of chaos. Next Friday I hope to be able to report that my office is clean, my clothes are in order, and five bags of trash have been put on the curb.

Keep That First Draft!

My father was an artist and he also taught History of Art.

He always urged his students to not only look at the artist’s finished masterpiece, but to find and study the preliminary sketches of the work. He believed that those early sketches often had a vitality and spontaneity that got lost or refined away in the finished painting.

The same can be said of a novel. Too much polishing and refining can erase the early energy and excitement of the first draft. It’s important to reread that first telling of your story before you send out your manuscript. Although the first draft is rough, in terms of vocabulary and structure, it may have an electric quality that you want to maintain. Make sure the original spark is still there and that the early energy hasn’t been diluted.

If it has – put it back again.

Robin Hathaway

Don’t Throw Away Your First Draft!

Botticelli – Study for "The Allegory of Abundance"

My writing methods are old-fashioned. I write my first draft by hand on yellow legal pads. It is illegible to anyone but myself and sometimes, even to me. However, I never throw it away, at least not until the book is in print. Why?

Because, with all its misspellings, grammatical errors, clichés and structural problems, it also has the energy, the spark, the originality that belongs to the first telling of every story.

My father was an artist — a painter, a print-maker, and a teacher. He taught History of Art and Studio Art at a college in Pennsylvania. Whenever there was an exhibit of preliminary drawings and sketches by great painters, in Manhattan, Philadelphia, or Washington, DC, he urged his students to go see it. “These early drawings will have a vibrancy, an energy, and a freshness that is sometimes lost in the finished masterpiece — after all the refining and polishing takes place,” he said.

The same applies to writing, I think. So hang onto that first draft, turn to it once in awhile when you are revising and polishing your manuscript. Make sure you haven’t polished away something important such as that electric charge that compelled you to tell the story in the first place!

Robin Hathaway