P(l)otholes

On the road that leads from our village to the nearby town there’s an interchange. The section that takes the heaviest traffic to and from the town is about half a kilometer in length. The half leading out of town is in pretty decent condition. The half leading into town, on the other hand, is a patchwork of, well, patches of tarmac laid over the potholes that open up on a pretty much regular basis.

Instead of closing the section and repairing it, the local authorities seem content with just responding to the latest potholes, patching them over, then waiting for more to open up and patch them over again. Maybe they don’t have the money or maybe they have just settled into a patchworking routine because there is a sign at the start of that section setting a speed limit of 40 km/h because the patchwork is bumpy. It is a permanent sign.

Building a road — and rebuilding a damaged road — takes a lot of work, I hear. It’s much easier, and cheaper, to patch over the potholes until patching no longer works and you simply must invest in rebuilding the road. Every time I pass that patchwork section I can’t help but think about drafting a novel. I know a lot of authors follow the advice dispensed by Neil Gaiman and probably others about getting the basic story out in the first draft and then following with more drafts, in which you rework it, flesh it out, fill plot holes and tie the whole thing together nicely. Every time I read an author’s Acknowledgments section at the end of a book and see a reference to drafts, my soul cries in horror. I hate redrafting and am not ashamed to admit it.

When I first tried my hand at a novel, I went through two drafts, as far as I remember. The first draft was crap, as was to be expected, so I never finished it. I went back and started again because fixing the crap would take too long and also because I’d rather start from scratch than have to fix any writing. That was “The Lamiastriga” and while I’m quite attached to that book, I don’t mind acknowledging it is not, overall, a good book, both subjectively and objectively speaking. I’ve read worse but then again, I’ve read much better, lots of much better.

As time went by and my body of word accumulations grew I learned two lessons empirically. First, forget about planning because the stories never turn out the way I plan them. Second, try to get the story right on the first try and then have torturous fun with the editing and proofing. Building fictional roads from scratch, in other words, has revealed itself to me as easier than patchworking, then rebuilding, then patchworking, then rebuilding until you have a shiny new road. That’s because I tend to be rather lazy and wouldn’t make an effort that I can avoid making. I do admire the tireless people who do make the effort and I salute them. But since I really like twists, here’s a twist: nothing is easy.

I’m now about a third of the way through Fang in Fang 4, which I’ve titled “Conspiracy”. When I first started it, the writing flowed like water out of a broken tap. I should’ve known something would go wrong and it did, by page 75. I already complained about that, mentioning my aversion to monumental editing as reason to bin the, yes, first draft, and start from scratch. This time, I went about it slowly. I didn’t write every day. I didn’t try to finish a chapter a day, not least because I didn’t have the time. I didn’t rush myself because, as I realised with some surprise, writing three books about a set of characters tends to result in the accumulation of information that needs minding while you write the fourth book. If you’re not careful, you will end up with at least three drafts, the horror. So I use post-it notes and any scrap of blank paper.

“Fros still feels guilty about her mother and brother,” says one such note, while another reminds me that “Jules comes from money and luxury”. “Don’t forget Ken has an oil company,” says another because, I’m sorry but there’s a time and place for originality and when I have a Texan grandpa type for a character, an oil company is just a no-brainer, and actually I’m not sorry at all. I really like Ken. Also, I’m open to ideas about the name of his company. Some notes are a bit cryptic, even for me. My latest, for instance, stuck to the wall, states “Pig iron cargo with “extra” in it: Konnie”.

Here’s what happened: I had a scene in which Konnie had to leave a room. For reasons I cannot explain, I decided to motivate her leaving the room with an expected cargo of pig iron that had just arrived in Louisiana and that had secret content, whose nature at that point was a secret even to me. The note on the wall served to remind me, one, to revisit the cargo at a later point, and, two, find out what the hell that secret content was. I have since ticked off both points and am quite pleased with the result.

Now, could I have laid out the bones of the story and then added flesh on them in a consistent, logical manner over the course of three or more drafts? I could’ve if I were the sort of person who has a highly organised mind and an excellent memory. As things stand, it’s notes on the wall, on the desk, and on the kitchen table, a Word document containing more notes, and a slow grind through the story, at a rate ranging from two sentences to half a chapter a day. I’ve just made a breakthrough in the “Who Did The Bad Thing?” department, have two pressing “How” questions to answer, and I’m starting to suspect the story would need a fifth book but we’ll see.