I wrote a novel last year. Then I rewrote it. Since that worked so well, I did it twice more. Right now I’m waiting for comments on the fourth draft from my editor person. I’m not paying the editor person at present and they have a great day job, so reading my stuff falls somewhere between changing the cat box and taking a vacation. Except they don’t have a cat, and they only vacation once a year.
But this editor person has been incredibly helpful in transforming my writing into something readable and provided lots of great feedback. When I sell the book, they’re the first one I’m thanking in the acknowledgments.
We work together every Wednesday evening, going over about a chapter a week. Sometimes its a bit more, but usually it works out to between 10-15 pages a session. With the holidays everything got pushed off for a bit, but we’re almost back on track.
The book started out as an attempt to out do Silence of the Lambs. My reasoning was simple. I figured, go after one of the best of the best in fiction. With 5 million copies sold, I figured it was a meaningful slot to aim for.
And aim for it I did. I spent nine months talking like Hannibal Lecter every time I answered the phone. I read the book. Twice. I dissected and analyzed. I watched the movie repeatedly, trying to understand what made it so good and why it it worked. And I wrote. Every day for 5 to 6 hours, I wrote. When I wasn’t writing, I kept working, bouncing ideas off anyone who would listen. I worked out every detail of my story, talking it through until my wife told me to stop or she was going to start sleeping on the couch.
I wanted to create a heavy like Lecter, evil and dark, and a hero that was every bit as compelling as the villain. Another requirement was that the story ooze conflict, the sort that hooked people right from page one. It was a pretty tall order.
After 9 months of wrestling with mangled prose that kept falling short, I realized the hero in my book didn’t want his story told in third person. Maybe I wanted to write my own Hannibal, but my hero, my hero had other plans for me. He was no Lecter any more than he was Clarice Starling. He was something different altogether. He was in those pages, just beneath the surface, right in front of me from the beginning, trying to break out. I could sense it, but couldn’t connect the dots.
So with some begging from the editor person, I rewrote a chapter in the first person. Just to try it out and see what it would feel like. Suddenly, the book stopped sucking, and it got a hell of lot easier to write. And then the story started to tell itself, rather than me trying to tell the story. It became fun to see what would happen next and not an exercise in discipline.
Tomorrow the editor person and I will meet and go over the entire fourth draft. At this point it should be just fine tuning. Or so I’m hoping…