As I finish reading the last words of a found novel and notes, I am reminded of the writing of those last words. How the fire burned in the fireplace. The intensity of emotion that passed as I realized there was no going back to it. The story was finished. Complete.
I am not feeling that way now. After having read the tale originally from the inside out, reading it as an outsider I am dissatisfied. The characters, though once magnetic and fiery now seem a bit dull. The inspiration, I think dwindles about one third of the way through…
I could go on, but I won’t. I should edit it, but will I?
Ultimately, it’s your decision what to do with any of your work that will determine what you do with old work when you innevitably return to it whether by intention or accident.
Some people literally put their writing in a safe box. Some people try to sell it for years without success. Some people simply write to write, without yearning for economic success because of it.
I answer the question by returning to the beginning of the novel. With a stiff cup of coffee in hand and a pen, I scratch words and ideas in the margins, cut entire scenes because in the end I know these scenes do not develop the characters or move the action forward.
I have become exceedingly accurate at doing this.
Each scene is cut to the essence. Soon enough, there is no filler. The story is an empty canoli shell. But this in my opinion is the best part, the sweet shell.
In my opinion when you leave someone enough space to breath their own ideas into the tale, their own interpretations of what a character should or should not have said or done, they will surely find the tale lodged in the problem solving cubicle of thinking where it will ruminate, take seed, grow further than it was ever intended to.
It depends largely on your intentions.
My intention is to make it a better story. It always is.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Found: First Novel Notes, part one
Recently, I was cleaning out a small room in the house so I might better utilize it for something other than storage of random art things and wine.
In doing so, I came across a box containing notes and magazine clippings and books and memorabilia I had collected. The theme of the items in the box was a novel, my first attempt at one at least.
Please note at this time: The novel was not also in the box.
But in a flash I was rewriting it. I could quite literally smell the room where it all begins, the confusion of characters as they wake.
I found myself waxing.
That might be what this is ... a waxing. A rebuffing of the terms of the novel, as I once understood them. To sit down with it again. To rework it, publish it.
The question is how . How do you return to a project ten years in the making and two fifths finished?
The box is a good place to start.
In this particular instance, I set myself up fairly well. When originally I was doing research for the novel, I collected enough fodder to get me started and keep me writing indefinitely.
There are character sketches and deep rooted paradigms that branch out as to be the sky's competition of breadth. I attempted to know my characters better than they knew themselves. I needed to know them in order to bring them to the scenes they were in.
Even now, the steps are evident. From obstacles to character goals and scenes. I lay the notes from the box in columns on the floor. I draw a line of tape down the back of a complex of scenes and hold it up. That scene literally gets taped to another, and another.
Soon there's a family tree of the story.
I could sit down right now and begin where I was. In theory.
It wouldn't be hard. But I decide the better route is to see if there's a manuscript laying around somewhere.
And I go back to cleaning the storage room.
- Benjamin Spencer
Executive Editor
In doing so, I came across a box containing notes and magazine clippings and books and memorabilia I had collected. The theme of the items in the box was a novel, my first attempt at one at least.
Please note at this time: The novel was not also in the box.
But in a flash I was rewriting it. I could quite literally smell the room where it all begins, the confusion of characters as they wake.
I found myself waxing.
That might be what this is ... a waxing. A rebuffing of the terms of the novel, as I once understood them. To sit down with it again. To rework it, publish it.
The question is how . How do you return to a project ten years in the making and two fifths finished?
The box is a good place to start.
In this particular instance, I set myself up fairly well. When originally I was doing research for the novel, I collected enough fodder to get me started and keep me writing indefinitely.
There are character sketches and deep rooted paradigms that branch out as to be the sky's competition of breadth. I attempted to know my characters better than they knew themselves. I needed to know them in order to bring them to the scenes they were in.
Even now, the steps are evident. From obstacles to character goals and scenes. I lay the notes from the box in columns on the floor. I draw a line of tape down the back of a complex of scenes and hold it up. That scene literally gets taped to another, and another.
Soon there's a family tree of the story.
I could sit down right now and begin where I was. In theory.
It wouldn't be hard. But I decide the better route is to see if there's a manuscript laying around somewhere.
And I go back to cleaning the storage room.
- Benjamin Spencer
Executive Editor
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