Bo-Bo Knows Archaeology

Although it may look like the work of a writer is nothing more than a glorified romp with a cast of imaginary friends, the writing process is more like sorting your clutter into two piles before a cross-country move. In the first pile is the junk you're embarrassed that you ever paid good money to buy. In the second pile is the stuff you actually like. When you realize you have to whittle that second pile to a volume that will actually fit into your dinky little car, things get really hairy. Suddenly every dress and knickknack you ever owned is on trial defending its continued relevance, and the judge is a notorious hardass: your inner archaeologist.

In "On Writing; A Memoir of the Craft," Stephen King put the writer-as-archaeologist issue this way:

"Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer's job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as much as possible...No matter how good you are, no matter how much experience you have, it's probably impossible to get the entire fossil out of the ground without a few breaks and losses. To get even most of it, the shovel must give way to more delicate tools: airhose, palm-pick, perhaps even a toothbrush..."

I like the idea of writer as fossil-loving archaeologist, but King makes it sound like it's mostly a process of patience. Like all he has to do is find the dig site in his imagination and chip away.

When I spy an idea in the writerly corner of my brain, I become excessive. If a story idea is the flint arrowhead little Jack finds while digging for nightcrawlers in his own back yard, then the responsible writer/archaeologist ropes off a biggish square of that yard and digs oh so neatly.

Not me.

I'd evict the family. Or maybe the whole street. Nope, the neighborhood. Better yet, let's just oust the entire town. In my zest for ensuring I don't miss anything, I write everything. And I do mean every blessed thing. This is how the first draft of my novel clocked in at 922 pages.* My first go at my prologue? Forty-two pages.

Fortunately, my paunchy prologue was the perfect place to practice cutting and combining and condensing. All those C-words that get batted around when your novel needs to lose half (and maybe two-thirds) of its pages.**

I pasted my prologue into a new document with every intention of getting to work. I knew two things: the first was the point I would like the prologue to make, and the second was my desire to get that message across in eight to 10 pages. Watching me during my first revision session, you'd have thought I'd developed an allergy to my wordprocessing software. I googled, facebooked, texted, and surfed. I flossed. I cooked. I cleaned. I called friends. What I didn't do was write for any more than five minutes at a time.

I was looking forward to a more manageable prologue. I knew that cutting was in order. I was jonesing for the slashing. And on the first pass, I did cut more than 10 pages. The trouble was the fossil still wasn't really showing itself. On the second pass, I pared the prologue to 20 pages and was still jumping away from the job. I just wasn't seeing it.

I reminded myself of my narrative goal and went through a third time, cutting even more deeply. I walked away with 12 pages and the arc of the prologue--my fossil had a skull, a tail, and ribs between the two. I knew what I had to condense, I knew which scenes to combine, and I knew what needed to be added. Only when I saw the fossil taking shape was it at all comfortable to get in there and dig.

The final(ish) tally of the prologue is 10 pages. A coup by any stretch, I know, but I can't help but feel that it's still too long. That maybe the fossil I was after is actually in the belly of the one I uncovered. For now I'm on to paring back part one. I have to believe that belly fossil questions are really the stuff of third drafts. My future as a writerly archaeologist depends on it.

* I submit the following Freudian typo: the first time through this sentence, I wrote "pounds" instead of "pages." My novel clocked in at 922 pounds, indeed.

** While overwriting is a very viable first draft form, the jury is still out on OVERoverwriting. So far, I do NOT recommend it.