Back of the Envelope

I booted up my old computer yesterday and went digging around for the first draft of Eyes in the Shadow. As I said when I posted the first chapter, I originally wrote the beginning of the story years ago, but I had forgotten exactly how many years. I'd been thinking I'd written it in 2002, but the timestamp on the file says February 21, 2000. That's over five years ago now! Yikes, that's old. I think I originally wrote it weeks, maybe even months, before that, as that's just the date of the most recent modification to the file. (Yes, I checked the Created Date in the Properties, but that didn't help, as it's actually later than the modification date, which just means that I copied it from another location, probably a Zip disk I was keeping all my personal files on at the time.) Most likely I first wrote it some time in November or December of 1999, as the story is set in the Holiday Season. At that time, I wrote the whole of Chapter 1, and the portion of Chapter 3 which reads:

They shared a hotel room but didn't sleep together. It surprised Ryan that this seemed strange to him. The girl, though she insisted they would one day marry, had no intention of having sex until they were married because of her religious beliefs. She said all this without any prompting from Ryan. She seemed to think every guy was just looking for a chance to bed every girl they met. Ryan had told her, rather acerbically, that he had no intention of sleeping with a woman on the first date, even if they were engaged--he had quickly amended that the last part had been sarcastic and he did not in the least bit believe that they were supposed to marry. And what he didn't say aloud was that while he thought she was attractive enough, he wasn't sure it was wise to even sleep in the same room with this strange woman who saw things and thought she was his fiancee. So if neither of them had the least intention to sleep with the other, why did it seem so odd that they were not doing so? He realized, as he lay in the dark listening to her soft breathing, that it was all a product of his culture. If this had been a movie, he was certain they'd be sleeping together. It made sense: guy saves girl from certain death (or something), they share a hotel room while hiding from the mysterious man chasing them, guy sleeps with girl. That was the natural and logical progression; he could even remember a couple of movies where that exact sequence had happened. And considering his movie-going habits, that must mean it was pretty predominant. Except, in the movies, the plot would normally make more sense.

He was just about to drift to sleep when he remembered that short, doubtful, insincere prayer he'd said just before all this started. God, he decided, had a bizarre sense of humor. Still, the prayer had been answered in a way, so he decided another, more serious one couldn't hurt. "God, help me through this." He glanced in the direction of the girl, breathing softly as she slept. "Help us both through this."

My original inspiration had gotten me to the point where they ran away from Red-eyes, but it gave out when I was trying to figure out how they escaped. I was inspired as to what would happen once they managed to do so, though, which is why I wrote out that scene at the hotel. I particularly liked the line "he wasn't sure it was wise to even sleep in the same room with this strange woman who saw things and thought she was his fiancee." It took me nearly five years to figure out how to get them to that hotel room. You'll notice that I just called her "the girl" in that section. That's because I didn't name her Emily until I wrote Chapter 2, in 2004.

You know, this actually gives me hope. If I can finish a story I started five years ago, then maybe I can do the same for "Galatea" and Fire.

Incidentally, I also found the first rough outline I did on the Maji. That's dated April of 2002.

Now that I've finished Eyes in the Shadow, I'm going to need a new writing project. I'd like to get back to the sequel to Fire, which I haven't touched in a couple of months, but that won't produce anything for the next Storyblogging Carnival. I do have a couple of old stories lying about that I can try revising into something readable, but that always takes more work than I expect. I think that since I'll be out of town anyway for the next Carnival, I'm just going to take a month off from Storyblogging. Not from writing, mind you--I still want to work on Fire's sequel, remember--but for once, I don't think I'll have an entry in the Carnival. I think it'll do fine without me, and I'll be back with something worthwhile in the Carnival after that.

Dave at Faith in Fiction thinks we writers need to work harder:

I’m trying to figure out where the system is breaking down. Because it’s one thing to receive an unsolicited proposal from a first time novelist through the blog that’s rough and not-ready-for-prim-time. It seems like it’s quite another thing to receive a proposal that’s of virtually similar quality from an agent. That, to me, is a system breakdown.

No offense writers, but we need to be harder on you. YOU need to be harder on you. First drafts shouldn’t cut it. Dialogue manacled in cliché shouldn’t cut it. Inauthentic genre books plotted and detailed from Hollywood movies and not hardcore, intensive research shouldn’t cut it. Voiceless narrative without the punch of imaginative personality shouldn’t cut it.

I agree: I need to work harder. Consider Eyes in the Shadow, for instance. Now I like this story. After nine months, I think it's come together nicely as a story that works. I like the characters, I like the conflict, and I think the plot is plausible and satisfying. However, it's not ready to send to a publisher. At the least, I need to put it aside for two months, then come back to it and do one very thorough revision, followed by another polishing revision. There are some things that don't feel right about the story as it's written, but I need some distance before I can fully judge. The story became very clunky around the middle, wandering around with no real purpose, and that needs to be streamlined. There's a lot of dialogue that goes back and forth without really getting anywhere. Certain things I introduced near the end need better foreshadowing, and I'm certain that there are some contradictions I haven't caught yet. There's also my innate tendency to be sparse with my descriptions. Sometimes I think this is a good thing, as modern novels seem positively dripping with scenery compared to the classics, but often it seems that my characters are acting in a vacuum. Heck, I'm not sure I even have complete physical descriptions of my main characters. Speaking of whom, when I'm not careful, they tend to blur together, the distinctness of their personalities subsumed in my own, as they all start to act, think, and talk like me.

Hopefully, this criticism sounds too harsh to you. If that's the case, then I've at least partially succeeded in correcting my negative tendencies in the initial writing and the revisions, but it'll still take more work before I'm fully satisfied. The Eyes in the Shadow you've been reading is not a rough draft--it's gone through at least one, and in the case of some chapters as many as three, revisions--but it's not the final version yet.