Getting It the First Time

            There are plenty of generalizations about the writing process, and some of them are even true. Today I’d like to talk about one that’s often presented as being absolutely true, even though it’s only mostly true.

            It’s been expressed in various ways, but the thrust of it is, “The first draft of a book is always terrible.”

            Substitute “usually” or “often” for “always” in that sentence, and I wouldn’t argue too much. From almost everything I’ve written and heard, I’ve concluded that most authors, particularly fiction authors, discover their book in the process of writing it. When the first draft is completed, they’re left with something that ended up being a lot different than what they started out to do.

            Get me rewrite!

            There are, however, and always have been authors who know what they want to do and pretty much nail it on the first try. In such cases there’s always some cleanup and tightening to be done, but it’s hardly a major overhaul.

The Speedy Genre Writer

            I’ve read — though so long ago I’ve forgotten where — that Dickens and Shakespeare wrote quickly, channeling the muse before she escaped. When Dickens, at the urging of Bulwer-Lytton, rewrote the end of Great Expectations, he was simply adjusting what he already had, not reimagining it anew.

            A certain number of genre writers, working within an established format, are able to figure out the book beforehand and come up with a first draft that works, with a few changes. I have recent evidence of this. Over the weekend I read Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mystery The Second Confession, written in 1949. And I do mean all written in 1949.

            According to a note at the end of my edition, Stout began writing the book (some 240 pages long) on March 16, 1949 and completed it April 23. It was then submitted to the publisher and after typesetting, final editing and legal review, it was published September 6.

            That’s five and a half months from first keystroke to book off the presses. And he did it with typewriters. And 65 years later, it’s better written than many current best-sellers.

Doing the Thinking First

            It takes me a year to get one of my mystery novels written, but it isn’t the writing and revisions that take up most of the time. A lot of that time involves prep work and outlining. I’m one of those writers who needs to know where the story is going and how it’s getting there before I actually start writing it.

            Since I’m not writing mystery novels for a living, and since I have a day job, and since I have a life outside writing, my books get written when I can get to them, which is often in fits and starts. Some weeks I can work on the book nearly every day. At other times, it goes a week or two (in one instance a month or two) without any attention.

            But because I’ve imagined the book in considerable detail before writing it, what finally gets into print (or e-book) is essentially an amended and improved version of the first draft. I’m not saying that’s the way any other author ought to do it, but it works for me and it’s worked for other writers who have been deemed good. I won’t tell you how to write your book if you promise not to tell me that my first draft can’t possibly be any good.

Good Advice if You Can Use It

            In a recent email exchange with another mystery author, she brought up the late Elmore Leonard’s dictum, quoted in many of his obituaries, that a big part of the revision process on a manuscript consists of getting rid of the stuff the readers will skip over.

            That’s a fairly old line, with a lot of variations. For instance, Charles Ludlam, founder of the Ridiculous Theater Company, once did a production of the complete plays of Shakespeare in two and a half hours. Asked how he could possibly condense all those plays into a length of time generally taken up by one (if abridged a bit), he replied, “Easy. I just left out all the boring stuff.”

            And there’s the rub. If someone could argue that the greatest writer ever was boring nearly 98 percent of the time, what hope is there for the rest of us? Not much. And it comes down to the question of how does the author figure out when something is boring. I mean, you wouldn’t have written it in the first place if you thought so, and a line like Leonard’s isn’t much help when the devil is in the details.

To Fish or Not to Fish?

            In my mystery novel The McHenry Inheritance, the protagonist is on a fly-fishing vacation in the High Sierra when he gets caught up in a web of local intrigue, culminating in murder.  Because of his reason for being there, I put in a couple of detailed fly-fishing scenes, describing the scenery and the technique in some detail.

            Is that the boring stuff that readers will skip over? I’ve heard from some who did, but nonetheless said they enjoyed the rest of the story. I’ve also heard from a number of people who don’t fish but said they really liked the descriptions of place and enjoyed learning more about fly-fishing, which was more complex than they had imagined it to be.

            So help me out here, Elmore. Who do I listen to?

            Actually, the decision has been made. I’m halfway through the second book with the same protagonist, and since the running story line is that he goes on a fishing vacation and ends up in the middle of a mystery, I’m including the fishing scenes, a few pages’ worth anyway. If the reader wanders, so be it.

Just Tell the Damn Story

            This calls to mind something one of my mentors at the newspaper, Bud O’Brien, used to say.  Every young reporter would inevitably get carried away with some story and try to overwrite it and be too clever for his or her own good. When Bud was on the city desk, those efforts would get bounced back to the reporter with the following advice:

            “You have a pretty good story here. When you have a good story, don’t try to be clever; don’t try to be cute. Just tell the damn story.”

            Excellent advice as far as it goes, but again, the problem is how does one “just” tell the story? It’s a question of knowing the structure and having a sense for when and where to bring in the piquant details. Not to mention knowing what those details are and being able to separate them from the details that don’t matter and should be left out. That’s the problem with writing and the reason so many people fail at it. Anybody can get the general idea, but figuring out how to make it work one sentence at a time is a bitch.

           

How They Taught Poetry in 1905

            Up in the Seattle area for my nephew’s wedding this past weekend, I found myself with a little time to kill before we had to show up, so I dropped into the Upper Case bookstore in Snohomish and looked through the used book section. All too often such a place will have little else but recycled paperback bestsellers, but this joint was the real deal.

            One of my sisters (not the nephew’s mother) just came out with a book of poetry and wasn’t able to come out from New York for the wedding, so I checked the poetry section to see if I might get a little something for her. That was where I came across Graded Poetry, Fourth Year, published in 1905 by the Charles E. Merrill Co.

            It was a slender volume, edited by Katherine D. Blake, Principal of the Girls Department at Public School No. 6 in New York and Georgia Alexander, a Supervising Principal in Indianapolis. One of them presumably wrote the introduction, and since the copyright has expired, I’ll quote from it liberally:

Listen. Just Listen.

            “Poetry is the chosen language of childhood and youth. The baby repeats words again and again for the mere joy of their sound: the melody of nursery rhymes gives a delight which is quite independent of the meaning of the words. Not until youth approaches maturity is there an equal pleasure in the rounded periods of elegant prose. It is in childhood therefore that the young mind should be stored with poems whose rhythm will be a present delight and whose beautiful thoughts will not lose their charm in later years.

            “The selections for the lowest grades are addressed primarily to the feeling for verbal beauty, the recognition of which in the mind of the child is fundamental to the plan of this work. The editors have felt that the inclusion of critical notes in these little books intended for elementary school children would be not only superfluous, but in the degree in which critical comment drew the child’s attention from the text, subversive of the desired result. Nor are there any notes on methods. The best way to teach children to love a poem is to read it inspiringly to them. The French say: ”The ear is the pathway to the heart.” A poem should be so read that it will sing itself in the hearts of the listening children.”

No Dumbing Down

            They don’t make too many educators like that any more, nor do they publish textbooks like this for the teaching of poetry. Perhaps you were wondering what sort of poetry fourth graders read in public school 108 years ago. Well, you might recognize some of the authors:

            William Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, Christina G. Rossetti, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Alfred Tennyson, James Whitcomb Riley, Eugene Field, William Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Blake, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, James Russell Lowell, William Cullen Bryant, Helen Hunt Jackson, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others.

            Of course some of those writers were deemed advanced enough that they were held back for reading until the second semester of fourth grade.

            Generally speaking, it’s a trap to believe that things were somehow better back in the good old days, but sometimes you can’t help it. I wonder how many fourth graders today are exposed to the breadth and depth of poetry reflected in this book, and taught with the humane understanding shown in the quoted introduction. Far too few, I suspect.