Rejected First Drafts

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https://twitter.com/TheWriteScott

Had some twitter fun this morning.  You sometimes see people coming up with the rejected first drafts of familiar lines or sentences.  I forced myself to stop at three.  This is the kind of thing I used to spend all day doing, and that way leads back to madness.

This started when I remembered  Ray Bradbury's great opening line, "It was a pleasure to burn."  Fahrenheit 451 was my first real science fiction novel, and every once in a while I'm reminded of it.  But enough from me.  Could the masters have started their famous works this way?

"It was a pleasure to burp."
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

"The hero of my own life? Nah. I'll just become the world's best magician."
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. Or do I? Mwuhahaha!"
Song of Myself - Walt Whitman

Hand Written Manuscripts

I love hand writing manuscripts.  The only issue is, I also despise hand writing manuscripts.

Getting to the computer to write isn't always an option.  Neither is using that as an excuse to keep from writing.  Enter the notepad format.

Writing out long hand actually has some benefits.  Usually it means I'm not on a computer, so fighting the many distractions is easier.  I can write pretty much anywhere too.  The writing itself seems to flow a little bit quicker in that format.

But you know what?  Publishers won't accept my handwritten manuscripts.  You can't blame them for that.  I wouldn't accept them either.

Typically, I can finish a short story or novel chapter quicker if I'm writing longhand.  It's not because of typing speed- I'm pretty fast.  It's just- I'm not limited to location, and sometimes the ideas fall onto the paper better in this format.

Then I retype.  Or is it type?  I try not to edit as I do this, but it's pretty much impossible not to tweak a little.  I'm a minimalist writer when it comes to first drafts.  Transferring a 2500 word story from paper to computer will usually add about 300-500 more words. Then in revising, I'll reduce that by about 100-200 words.  Or so.  It all depends.

All that to say, I love hand writing stories.  It's quick and I get strong stories.

And I hate it.  It takes roughly twice as long start to finish.  I wrote the last short story in about three days.  It took me that long to type it out again.

What's a writer to do?

Rejection Made Me Kill The Aunt

I received a very nice rejection letter just before Christmas for a story I'd written just over a month ago. Because of it I killed an aunt.

First things first.  What made the letter so nice?  Three things.  1) It was a personal letter.  2) It stated the reason the story wasn't accepted and 3) The editor was right.

I didn't see the problem when I wrote the story and sent it off.  Basically, the editor said the story didn't get started quickly enough.  The opening paragraph caught her attention, and then it stalled.  Eventually the story picks up, but by that point too many readers will have dropped out.

I follow Heinlein's Rules as much as possible.  Horribly paraphrased, Rule 3 is to not continue rewriting a piece except to editorial demand.  Now, this was a rejection so I can't resubmit the piece to this publisher.  But rather than just sending it elsewhere, I took a closer look.

I spent a good portion of the beginning writing about a character that I really liked.  She's the aunt of the protagonist with a kleptomania problem (but don't worry, she's taking something for it.)  She hates her nephew's uncle and I thought this would add tension to the story.

But she doesn't really do anything.  She's there.  She bickers.  She starts to steal something but is stopped.  Finally, I have her leave the scene she's in so the story can progress.

And that should have had bells going off in my head.  My klepto was stealing story time from everybody else.

This wasn't all that had to be fixed, but the delete key fixed the biggest issue.  And you know what?  I didn't have to write a single word to to explain anything.  Every reference to her, every line of dialogue, all of it worked without her being in it.

And I really liked her.  Maybe Stephen King was right.  "Kill your darlings."