D______, first draft: complete at 94,100 words.
One of the bizarre things authors seldom mention when talking about their latest book—Esperance, in my case—is the duality of the experience. Because, in truth, saying that you’re here to talk about your latest book is almost always a lie. The “latest” book is the one you are working on, the one that has yet to see the light of day. The one that occupies your thoughts as you wrestle with character and plot and the ordering of words. Even though this unborn effort is the one filling your writing mind, it’s not the one you’re meant talk about. The one you’re meant to talk about is the one that you wrote two years ago or longer. All the time you talk about the book you have written, you think about the one you are writing. You become the literary equivalent of Schroedinger’s cat: the creature that, thanks to the bizarre dualities of quantum theory, can be both dead and alive at the same time.
This “have written/am writing” duality hit me quite hard at this year’s Cymera Festival. After the humiliating discovery that I knew far less about SF than I thought, my ignorance being spectacularly exposed at the Friday night SF quiz, I was lucky enough to be part of a wonderful panel that included Roisin Dunnett, who talked about her debut novel, A Line You Have Traced, and Nicholas Binge (an SF quiz genius), whose not-debut novel, Dissolution, came out in March. Chaired by the author, podcaster and SF-quiz monster, Marco Rinaldi, we had a great time talking about books, the writing of books and life in general. My only regret was that we didn’t have more time for audience questions. They had some great ones: challenging and really hard to get to grips with. There were plenty more left to go when Marco had to call time. Bummer!
On the other hand, Marco’s calling time also brought a temporary truce in the battle raging inside my skull. The “be professional” part of my brain was furiously trying to concentrate on being present in the room; the “screw this” lobe, however, was trying to drag me back to the draft of my [actual] latest novel, D______. Why? Because I was struck by inspiration right there on stage and was itching to get back to it.
As regular readers of this blog will know, I am more plotter than pantser, although I don’t find either of these terms particularly helpful. They imply a rigidity of approach with no overlap between the two. My outlines are just that: outlines. More nautical chart than roadmap, they point in a general direction. How I get there depends very much on what I encounter along the way.
In the case of D______, what I had encountered in the days leading up to Cymera was an impenetrable reef roiling the shallow waters between myself and the intended destination. I very much knew where I wanted to land, but I had no idea how to get there without tearing massive great holes in both plot and character development. Or, less pretentiously: given all that had gone before, I couldn’t make the ending make sense.
Until I could. While Roisin and Nick were making great points about the writing life, I could suddenly see it right in front of me: the narrow but navigable channel into harbor. YES!!!
Somehow, somehow, I managed to both keep my seat and not blurt any of this out on stage. Panel and book signing done, I rushed back to my laptop to get started. It took me a week or two to get there but the first draft of D_______ is finally done. Ironically, I completed it the day my son graduated from college, so the two things will be forever linked in my mind.
Is that good or bad?