Drat! Our guests from out of town were arriving today. I wouldn’t be able to attend to my favourite pastime.
Thursdays were always my locked away times—dedicated to drafting a book chapter to send to my editor. We would then meet face-to-face the following Tuesday to go over her revisions.
Each chapter of my book, a self-contained short story, took, on average, seven weekly attempts to complete. Today was worse. A new chapter was in the offing. Usually, my first draft would start at 3,500 words—a jumble of interwoven topics.
Week by week, the chapter would be pared down to 2,500 words. The topics reduced to two “compare and contrasts”.
I was determined to complete a draft today, despite my visitors.
Starting at 5 a.m., I completed my first draft around midnight. All day, as we collected our guests from the airport, brought them home, took them on a tour of our city and otherwise engaged them, I stole twenty minutes here, twenty minutes there to chip away at the draft. It had ballooned to almost 5,000 words—a death knell for a typical chapter. I dreaded my upcoming meeting with my editor.
My story had turned out to be about a court trial with the CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) for tax evasion. To me, the story veered from one anecdote to another. There was no consistency. The transitions were awkward. I knew exactly what my blunt and irascible editor would say: “Start all over again. The subject is unappealing. The sentences are too long. The whole story is too long. It reads as though you rushed through like a slapdash painter piling dollops of paint in uneven strokes.”
I was mortified. Should I still send the story in? Perhaps use my guests as an excuse to cancel our rendezvous on Tuesday? Take the week to rethink the chapter?
Weighing the sweat and tears poured into this draft, I decided—to hell with it. And sent it anyway.
As usual, my editor didn’t reply. I had to wait until Tuesday to discover her verdict.
“It’s wonderful. How did you manage to do it so well? It needs one more attempt to complete.”
This, the longest chapter in my book, was done and dusted in two drafts instead of the usual seven. To cap it all, Kirkus, the renowned independent book reviewer, cited it as the best chapter in my book.
Who knew?
The above chapter, Judgement Day, came from my second book, Heart of New York. I received no end of complaints from the dozen friends to whom I’d send each completed draft. My lasting love had been reserved for my first book, Chasing Aphrodite. It was a warm and sunny travelogue about Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean in summer. Heart of New York was the very opposite—set in bitter winter, with no picturesque vistas. I then compared it to Calgary, my hometown, also in midwinter. All was grey.
Our family sojourn in Manhattan brought out a host of depressing stories. “Why didn’t you retire after your first book? Surely, you’re not going to publish your second?” As loyal as friends can be, they can be heartbreaking.
What they didn’t realise was that I had set Heart of New York as a challenge to myself: “If you want to prove yourself a real writer, choose a subject you can’t stand. If you can write a book on it, then indeed you can call yourself a writer.”
Eventually, halfway through the book, the tide turned. Rick called me after reading my latest chapter. “That Joe character of yours was terrible. I wouldn’t do half the things he did.” Rick went on criticising Joe for twenty minutes.
“Rick, if you didn’t enjoy my story, why are you wasting so much of my time analysing my character?”
Little by little, my friends began to realise Heart of New York wasn’t a breezy travelogue, but asked hard questions about what doing the right thing in life really means. Yet, each story, as dismal as it began, always ended in hope.
My latest book won greater accolades than my first.
Such is the fate of a senile teller of tales.
