Dec 25
“The first draft of anything is shit.”
- Ernest Hemingway
First of all, a Happy Christmas to all. (Everybody says Merry Christmas, but in The Night Before Christmas Santa Claus himself says ‘Happy Christmas’, so I am going to go with that.) I promised you a present, and a present you shall have. Don’t blame me if it turns out to be worse than a lump of coal, though.
I feel like I really, really need to preface this with a few disclaimers…
** First, I said I wanted to edit it before posting. I did not have time. As of this moment not only have I not edited any of the draft, but I have not even read it. There is a very real chance that many of you will have read my novel before I have.
** Second, this was written with speed as my goal, not quality. I was trying to amass words, not earn a Caldecott. This translates to a number of serious artifacts in the writing that I would otherwise not tolerate.
For one, despite causing the words and dialog to often sound unnatural, in most cases I tried to avoid the use of contractions. Just by saying, do not instead of don’t I can literally double my word count.
Also, with speed in mind I had a very, very strict policy of not reading over anything that I had previously written. When I woke up in the morning I would read AT MOST two sentences back before jumping back in. As a consequence, there is a very, very, very real likelihood that what the story says and what I think it says are two entirely different things. Consistency will definitely have suffered.
The last major side effect of speed writing is that at several points in the story I completely changed my mind as to what was going to happen, more often than not redefining the entire story itself on the spot. The problem with that approach is that what happens at one point in the story may be completely contradicted by what happens later. I made no attempt to go back and change what happened before, so if you find yourself asking, “Hey, but I thought…” just stop right there and try to forget about what came before.
** I feel it is largely inaccurate to describe this draft as an actual story. Rather, it is very much a journey of finding a story. I started with one thing in mind, but ended with something VERY different (I want to do more than capitalize and bold the word ‘very’, because the magnitude of the discrepancy is simply too enormous for stylized text to represent). Along the way I changed my mind about what story I wanted to tell at least a half dozen times. Characters will suddenly change their personality types and do or say things that I originally envisioned them never doing or saying. The manuscript is at its core a fluid exploration of taking my vague ‘story’ and refining it into My Story. Not until the last few pages did I even decide what that story would involve.
When all is said and done I feel that you will not have actually read my book. Instead you will simply have a decent idea as to what my book will eventually be. I have every intention of putting this book through a total rewrite (not editing, but actually rewriting every word), and hopefully the second draft will be a small step closer to the brilliant novel still trapped somewhere inside my mind. Michaelangelo, when asked how he sculpted a particularly beautiful statue, responded, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” Without daring to compare myself to him, I feel very much the same way about this book. I am starting with a bulky slab of rock and need only keep hacking away until the true art reveals itself. This first draft is but one round of hacking; the next will only be better.
** Lukas may be the only one who understands how ridiculously insecure I am about my writing, but for the rest of you let me just ask you this one favor. If you decide to read this, please keep your negative criticism to yourself as much as possible. I have absolutely no interest in hearing about misspellings (of which there should be almost none), grammar mistakes (of which there are plenty), or even comments along the lines of “you use the word smile too much,” (believe me, I already know). Beyond even that, I already have a very good idea of the many ways in which this draft is not good. That you even get to read it is only the result of a stupid promise that I made before it was written, back before I realized how truly bad this could be.
So yeah, please don’t tell me how much certain parts suck. For instance, I know that the vast majority of the dialog is terrible. That’s fine, I am going to rework it all anyway.
What would be tremendously helpful to me is to know which parts, if any, you do like. Just assume that the second draft of this mofo will have absolutely nothing in common with the first. If there is anything that you enjoyed or would like to see in the new draft, please let me know. Maybe you actually liked how every character smiled at least six dozen times. Maybe you liked the way I used a particular phrase, a turn of words if you will. Maybe you want to know more about some random subplot that I never spent much time on. Anything. If you have a positive, constructive comment, then I would very much like to hear about it.
However, go ahead and keep to yourself any comments that are positive in the sense of,
“I loved your draft, it gave my Delete key some much needed attention.”
or
“Thanks for the draft! I accidentally swallowed a bunch of poison and couldn’t find any syrup of ipecac. Fortunately I had just downloaded Purple Elephants and that made me throw up right away. You saved my life!!”
If you would prefer to keep your comments private you can always send me an IM (assuming you have my screenname) or shoot me off an email at wyvern@littlewyvern.com. If you don’t want to read this entire thing on a computer screen (or bother printing it out yourself) I have printed out several copies and had them bound. Send me an email with your address and I might consider mailing you one. If you take the file to Kinko’s they will charge you (or me) about ten dollars to have it printed.
Okay… you earned it (by doing nothing)… so here you go…
PURPLE ELEPHANTS – eat styrofoam peanuts
