Evolution of a Written Work

Dear You,

A few weeks ago I received my manuscript back from The Editor and, as expected, the experience was somewhat traumatizing. It was also educational.

First, it challenged my perceptions of my own work, and made me re-assess my “narrative” approach. I place “narrative” in quotations because December is written as a stream-of-consciousness/internal monologue, and so, as should be expected, The Editor told me that December lacks a narrative structure. The Editor didn’t sign the letter telling me about my lack of convention, and so I lack an address for the letter I feel compelled to write defending my work. I’d like to tell you about the evolution of December from a fairly typical story to the monster of internal monologue she is today in place of a response to said Editor.

Decemeber began as a fairly basic narrative with that third-person omniscience of general fiction. According to my computer, my first draft was finished about February 1, 2012 and began:

“Alright, my love.”  Sheila replied as Cole shut the living room door behind him. He was preparing to walk to his University, carrying his computer, books, water and some coffee in his black shoulder bag. A lighter load than usual. Cole mused about Sheila’s use of ‘my love’ as he opened the front door, such an English thing, that use of ‘Love,’ ‘my love’.

And I seem to have liked that style because it remained until April 2012, when I started (but never finished) a first person version which began:

Perhaps it was the rain that set my mood so low, plummeting as with each drop of rain to tiled roofs, down stuccoed walls, to concrete roads, to glide through cracks and seep deeper and deeper into the dark unbidden earth. “Depression”, is what some people call it, I call it searching for sustenance where nothing else has.

If I remember correctly, the change was prompted by a desire to explain myself and provide background on the the events of the story. Three months later, in July, I had added background prologue and changed the opening to reflect the strange passage of time:

Prologue

His first impression was that He was meant to stay with Her daughter, Karen, because He had been told Karen had a room open for rent. Karen did not have a room open for rent, but thought that the current tenant would be moving out within the month so had arranged for Him to stay with Her until that room became available. …

Thursday 1 December

Nearly three months had passed since Cole moved into Sheila’s home. During that time he and Sheila had become something like friends. Cole had made his preparations to walk back to the University Student Union Building where the chorus was performing their cabaret concert and was excusing himself from the living room.
“I’m going now,” he’d said and Sheila told him
“Alright, my love.”

This prologue/opening was very clear as far a story-line went, and I got to keep the “Alright, my love.” because that phrase had been stuck in my mind since the previous year. Between July and October I decided that the story should be a story within a story, and by October 7, 2012 I started an opening that read:

It’s strange to me. Finding these papers and examining the notes of a young life. The young life of a young man who bears my name, but who has faded beneath layers of experience.

Which kept the idea that the character found in December is an old life of old ideas and old ways, an object to be examined and reflected upon. By the end of October I refined my idea and created an opening which I rather like:

Today is the Seventh of October

Looking around my attic I see piles of odds and ends I have gathered over my life. I have to wonder when I started gathering these things. A sombrero hangs on one wall, boxes marked with different countries form a tidy hedge beneath it. It’s been awhile since I last came up here, whenever it was I bothered making the box hedge and cleaning the attic. A few years at least. It’s funny how distracting life can be.

And this approach, it seems, lead me towards the stream-of-consciousness idea (that and I’m pretty sure I had to read Virginia Woolf and James Joyce for class). The next phase scrapped the journals-in-the-attic device and started towards a more dramatic and uncertain tone:

Maybe we are the recollections of a time not yet come; a history to be examined and learned from by a future not yet established. Maybe our memories are invented as lessons for futures lives, and who we once were are instructors for who we are, and maybe who we are decides who we will become. Maybe we are nothing more than the memories of some future life.
Here I am. Cole stood in front of an arm chair, The living room. Sheila sitting in her chair. Getting ready, Books. Computer.  Coffee. snack: carrots and rice. Water. Fits well enough. Is that her gaze? Almost feel bad taking off.  Bag over shoulder. Leaving taking off. Out the door.

My files take a long time-leap from December 2012 to August 2013 from this point on, however the evolution from there was a fairly direct reworking of the entire work to the interior monologue, which I achieved over the summer of 2013. I reduced a lot of information into the limited first-person psyche and developed a limited narrator (underlined) that offers strict observational notes on the goings on in Cole’s world:

Cole stood near the pinkish arm chair, Here I am. This is where it takes place, it is placed here: here and now. Where is that? “Here and now.” Right now it is a living room, white walled, pink furnatured, with a flat screen TV, an old fire place, closed doors. Right now it is Sheila’s living room. Right now the here and now take place in Sheila’s house in Plymouth, England.

And that is the version I submitted for publication.

I have since altered it slightly and added a stronger through-line for the monologue to follow, as well as the possibility of a forward to help prepare the reader for the oddity of mock-consciousness. I’m still wondering if the forward is necessary, but I have a feeling it will be helpful in the long run.

I know this letter is longer than usual, but I hope you’ve found this process interesting.

Until we meet again,

Judah