The Junk Behind the Junk

Have you ever cleaned up your house and then discovered as you start clearing away the first stacks of magazines that behind it are boxes full of junk. And that behind those boxes there's even more stuff you forgot about? And then there's a whole room full of stuff you never knew you had? Okay, maybe with the exception of the hidden room I think we've all had that unwelcome feeling that you have more to do than you originally thought.

Well, today I just discovered my literary junk. When I was finished having breakfast with my son Alex and sent him to school, I thought - hey let's get an early start on redrafting Simon & Sally. I turned on the computer, went for a big cup of water in the meanwhile and then opened up my virtually dusty folder 'Fiction Writing'. The documents stared back at me with an almost accusing look of 'Where the heck have you been?'. I pulled a copy of the sub folder 'Draft 1', renamed it to 'Draft 2' and already felt some level of accomplishment. This was going well. Well, enter Murphy's Law. I created a spreadsheet document to keep track of all the major plot events and character developments that would take place - just so I wouldn't leave any inconstancy behind. After all, Nancy has to edit it next and she hates it when I leave behind major plot holes.

That done, I opened the synopsis of the story, conveniently chopped up into little chapters, which I had made two years ago and was the base of all the written chapters afterwards. Well, as I skimmed through the document I discovered I had started to make changes when Nancy had started to write last year August, essentially splitting up chapters into smaller chapters, shifting narratives from only Simon to other characters. Nancy had told me all great books switch narratives to keep the audience in suspense. Good examples are Dan Brown's series and J.K.Rowling's Harry Potter. The only problem was that she had stopped writing due to work pressure and with my work ending in November I had taken over writing duties. So of the thirty chapters the first ten had been revised and split up, with he remaining twenty unchanged and narratively speaking as thick as molasses.

Crap.

Luckily I had a map somewhere, which I had hung up on the wall at the time listing all the chapters, with little post-its splitting up the events in each chapter and re-assigning or adding new viewpoints. I dug out the map, tearing it up in the process and tripping down stairs to lay it like an ancient Greek mosaic on the floor. Then I painstakingly went through the synopsis updating the chapters with the new order of chapters. Of course Murphy's Law was still in full swing and it didn't take me long to discover I had also failed to write out the prologue and the fill-in chapters that are not directly linked to Simon's story, but flesh out the background of this rich and complicated world I'm trying to portray.

Crap. Crap.

So opening up a new document I started writing the prologue starring 1924 entrepreneur and self-styled archaeologist Brittany 'Bret' Dubois, who with his nephew is set to discover something huge in the Amazonian Rainforest and set in motion the events that will involve Simon & Sally Spangenberg in the 21st century. I'm not even finished with it and still have these other new chapters to contend with. Now I'm stuck between writing new material (essentially draft-style) and revising the draft that came before. Not too mention that the book is already 664 pages as it is. How am I ever going to cut it down to a respectable 400-500 pages? Maybe I can find a publisher who is willing to publish a tome as thick as two Harry Potter books combined with a world as rich and complicated as Lord of the Rings? Are you listening publishers?

Crap. Crap. Crapper-the-Crap.

For now I've plotted all seventy chapters (split up from thirty with an extra twenty-five added) and I know which several chapters are going to get axed, because they serve little purpose to the direct story. That's the good news - yay! The bad news is that regardless of what I chop, I will have to add material, which first will confuse my own sense of writing (drafting vs. redrafting = writing for me vs. writing for audience) and second add more pages again - boo! The worst news is that it already seems like I won't be able to get away with one clean redrafting before handing it to Nancy. With such a mixed mandate of writing this body of work might have to be redrafted one, two, several more times before it's even presentable to a publisher. And I don't have that kind of time! The clock is ticking and I need to also get back on track with work eventually. Hiss hiss!

But I cannot with good conscience allow Simon & Sally to become junk. The material is too powerful for that. It would not do justice to what I think will blow the competition out of the market with its profound concepts. I cannot just let it mold away in that hidden room.