Passing: Sharpening the Final Scenes

    Well, maybe not sharpening, but at least starting to cut away some of that excess marble from the block in which my story is encased, to borrow a metaphor from a certain famous sculptor.  I had also made a note at the top of my draft to “

1. Correct Price (not from MD, but did business in Montgomery Co), of Price, Birch, & Co, Alexandria, VA.

“

  Which was actually remedied by making a small change near the opening scene.

As I did my covering work, as we called it a steady stream of Porters came and went, pretending to deliver more work for me to do, but really dropping off messages for me, which I answered in a now steady and ever more practiced hand. This correspondence was in code, a thing I had first heard of from Anna, but it was another skill which I had not learned until I began to stay at the current safe house, as the Station Master thought it needful that I should share all of my knowledge of the Senator, including his men, his dealings as far back as I could remember, and his way of doing things. Especially his way of having things done to his rivals, whether they were political or business rivals, and also of his holdings, such little as I knew of them, in the north. Some asked if I had heard of one company or another, while others asked if I had ever heard him mention something called Life Insurance. And I had.

I had been surprised, on afternoon, when I was in attendance upon the Senator, and he received a visit from a man from up North. The man, upon seeing me, had bowed most respectfully, as I if I had been a white woman, and the Senator had immediately rebuked him, telling the visitor that I was a mere servant, and not to be bowed to. He had then ordered me to serve them wine, rather than his usual whiskey, even gesturing to me to take away his cigars as I left. That had told me just how much he disliked this visitor, which was no surprise, being a Yankee. What I had been very surprised to hear, however, were the words “New York Life Insurance company,” as I left the room.

     These two paragraphs were on page 263 of 305, and part of the rather overly long Final Ordeal scene, in which Willow actually triumphs over the antagonist, using her newly acquired skills and knowledge, including the crucial, but also already mentioned several times in the earlier scene, and again in the later or last antagonist scene, so I decided that I had been clubbing my readers over the head with this information, rather than feeding it to them subtly.  And while subtle is not meant to be addressed in the First Draft, excessive numbers of paragraphs also do not need to be in that Kitchen Sink draft, either.  When I start my Rough Drafts, I always leave my writing open to any idea that pops in to my head, knowing that I will have a lot of cutting away to do for a First Draft to appear, but I had not expected to hit just over 100,000 words.  What happened was that I got to my final four or five scenes, and realized that I still had so many ideas spinning that they all needed to get into some kind of part of the draft, because the ideas all jumped up and down in my head, demanding to be heard, and refusing to leave me alone until I wrote them into the Rough Draft, with no promises of not yanking them out before the First Draft.  So, the ideas have had their day in court, and need to go, now.  But the seeds of the ideas are staying, I think, and I hope that I will have a First Draft capable of, and small enough, to be shaped into a decent novel, should I be given the time and the energy, which it is not looking good for, at this moment, which is why I am considering just publishing the first draft as such, and continuing to work on the novel from there, with a ‘To Be Updated’ sort of message, if that is possible, to the effect that the next publication will be better.   But, my problem is that I doubt that any readers will be interested in following all of my drafts from horrible First Draft to ok Second, Better Third, and Decent Fourth.

Shira

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Learning via Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

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Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

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