Sometimes the simplest things keep you from achieving your goals. As a project manager, I'm well aware of this tenet. As a writer, I have a tendency to stumble in the dark and fall into potholes that I didn't see coming. Usually, when my writing stalls, I can't figure out just why.
I couldn't tell you why the last six months have been so hard, for example. After all, I finished my first draft in June. Surely the rest was easy?
I say "couldn't", because now I *can* tell you, and it's all thanks to the Firsts Workshop (first sentence, first paragraph, first page, first chapter) that the indomitable Jen Hendren is currently running at the CompuServe Books and Writers Forum. What's been stalling me (and this probably didn't take a psychoanalyst to see) is that I didn't know where to start the story. I had reams and reams of writing, but no idea how to order it.
We did first sentences last week, and the reception to mine was a bit mediocre. You've seen it before, further down the list, where I entered Nathan Bransford's first page contest. That page wasn't my original first page- hell, I've been through at least 8 different chapters in first place- I can't even remember which the original was. So, I wasn't so surprised at the response. People were interested, and did have good things to say, but I could see there were niggling questions; things that just didn't work, for some reason.
I decided for first paragraphs this week to go back to an earlier version- a time when the story started with Bill arriving back from the war, stopping at the gate to Edenvale farm when he realised the magnitude of what it meant to be home, paralysed by the fear of what he had to tell his parents about his brother. I had to rewrite this paragraph considerably to make it the very first in the story, but I was pretty pleased with it. TOTALLY wasn't expecting the reception it got from my fellow writers- there was universal positive reaction to it, which is not very usual. I got some very high praise from some- comparisons were made to Dr. Zhivago, and Diana Gabaldon used the paragraph as a demonstration in her comments on what makes a good opener.
I have no reason to share all this except that I've worked so, so, so hard to get to this point that I feel I'm entitled to brag a little. Finally the pieces have fallen into place. Finally, I know this is the right place to start. Now I've got my foundation, the bricks are all made- I just have to stack them up, one on top of the other, and I'm on my way to done.
Here's the first paragraph, which I've also added to the sidebar:
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Edenvale Farm, Western Australia
January 1920
The day Bill Cutler came home, he got as far as the front gate before he had to stop. Four months on trains and ships and carts, pushing forward, determined to get here, and now he couldn't take another step. He stood for a long while kicking divots in the red dirt with his borrowed black shoe. Battalions of tiny ants scattered under his assault, fleeing this way and that across the miniature valleys and plains of the drive. The rutted road stretched ahead of him up the hill to the old farmhouse, flanked on each side by an honour guard of stiff ghost gums. It was all just as he remembered it, from the golden sweep of the wheatfields, to the brush of wattle-scented sea air on his cheek, to the rough grey wood of the fencepost holding him up.
The only thing different in the whole landscape was him.
Excerpt from Between the Lines
A memory wavered into his mind, shimmery as heat rising off the road in summer.
He was six years old, and he’d been in Stonehaven no more than a week. He was hollow and lonely, confused. He missed the bustle of Melbourne. He missed the other kids on his street, the whole gang of them and their scampy games. He was stuck out in the bush, all of a sudden, with nobody but Lionel for company. Lionel had spent the first day ignoring him completely, and the last few beating the stuffing out of him whenever he got the chance. So that day, he’d wandered out to the back garden, if it could even be called that- just a scrubbed, flat expanse of hot red dirt with a veil of tangled trees and shrubs behind it.
The bush.
On impulse, he’d taken a couple of steps toward it, bare feet burning on the hot ground. The air was filled with the lemony scent of eucalyptus and the fresh tang of the distant sea. He'd filled his lungs and the two steps had turned into six, then ten, then before he knew it he was running headlong toward the wall of whispering green and brown, pushing all his mother’s warnings about snakes and savages from his head. He barrelled between the first spicy-scented leaves and, to his surprise, popped out on a sort of beaten down track, hidden from view of the house. After a moment’s pause to wonder how many strokes of the belt he’d get for this, he set off down the track toward the most interesting noise he’d heard so far- the babbling giggle of flowing water, and laced in with it, the high, clear notes of a girl’s voice, singing.
He stepped off the track with his heart hammering in his chest, suddenly terrified as he caught side of the wide river bank and the rolling mass of glassy green water.
She was standing there, all right- a girl not much taller than him, skinny as a rake, skin the golden brown of tree bark lit by sun. A cascade of golden curls rolled over her shoulders to skim at her waist, tendrils flicking out here and there as she drew back her arm and lobbed a big rock into the water.
He watched it go, traced the arc with his eyes until it hit the water with a loud splash and was swallowed. She was singing, still, her voice high and clear. She was wearing a white dress that finished at her knees and puffed into short sleeves at her shoulders. He looked down at himself, his grey shorts and jumper coated in jam, dirt and everything else he’d been busy with that morning. He stared at her back with suspicion. She was pristine. The only dirty bit of her was her feet, bare as his.
If it hadn’t been for those feet, he might have thought she was an angel. Or a ghost.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
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1 comments:
Wow, Claire. You seem to have a new burst of confidence. I can't wait to see the finished product.
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