Front Porch Fiction

Saturday was the contest deadline for a short story I'd set myself to, and I was determined to have the thing viable by then.

A really good story surprises you, like a car dropped out of the sky, flattening the daffodils on the front lawn. You can't help but pay attention, whether you want to or not.

For me the surprises, the climaxes if you will, of writing occur when I have disciplined myself to the process. Usually, I don't write because I am inspired. I write because I have made writing my job. Often I feel as if I have no choice in the matter, as I did in the middle of revising the short story for the umpteenth time. I felt saddled with responsibility for the characters, weighed down by my duty to get their story right, to be faithful to their personalities and voices.

When Elspeth naps, I write. When the girls go to bed for the night, I write. When Martin is home and can look after the girls, I write. I have my own office with a gentle view (Merry also sleeps there, often to the background noise of keys clicking away). I sit down in the morning and work to the detriment of unwashed dishes, unwashed me, unclean house.

So when I finished the first draft (30 pages) of Delphinium (look, I know it's a ridiculous name but I had to come up with something to submit it), I felt pretty good about myself. Actually, to tell the truth, I felt moody and creepy. I had spent a few nights by myself already while Martin worked late and I was saturated with the story. That evening, a scene crept up and bit me while I was typing away, and after I recorded it I felt a bit possessed. So as I stood in the shower, I felt that bizarre sensation that someone was standing outside the curtain in the emptied house. I finished washing my hair in a hurry. Then I did something normal--brewed a cup of tea and flipped on a Netflix BBC show.

When Martin staggered into the living room from his meetings, I nodded at my story. To his credit, Martin sat down right away and began reading it out loud. Sure, there were edits that surfaced as he read, but overall I thought it was pretty good.

When he finished reading all thirty pages, Martin looked up. "What do you think?" he asked.

Warned by his diplomacy and expression, I snapped back, "What do YOU think? I'm the one who just wrote it."

So he told me. Martin is the most gentle man on the planet, but blast it all if he doesn't speak straight every time. The first part was good, he said. But the last bit (oh, say, most of the story) strayed away from the core of the characters and plot. The climax was bogus, the conclusion wholly unsatisfying.

Fantastic.

I was tired and grumpy.

Hadn't I poured my scant time into this story (over a period of weeks, actually)? Hadn't I felt, as I typed the last word that it was rather brilliant? That I was mostly done?

But underneath my grumping, I knew Martin was right. I knew he was telling me what I was not honest enough to see. I had broken the most cardinal rule in the book about fiction--that is, I foresaw what was coming, I steered the characters into it, I forced my agenda onto them instead of letting them lead me. I had been heavy-handed, and Martin realized it in one reading.

Next day I plunged back into the story. I deleted whole pages, I reorganized, I let the characters lead me. I was terribly impressed when I finished. I secretly hoped my latest efforts would blow Martin away into outer space. Maybe he would gasp as he finished, blink back tears, offer me his hand in congratulations. You are a bloody genius! he would finally whisper.

Oh, it was nothing.

Friday night. Contest deadline was Saturday, but no sweat, man. Except for a few little edits, the story was done. I waited until our guests had left, and then Martin and I sat down late that night and he read the whole story out loud again. We were both tired out by the time he finished, because that story was still really long.

I waited for Martin to say something. I didn't have to wait long.

He unleashed a whole storm of critique--too long, the ending still messed up, whole sections had to go. Give me some time, he said, and I'll sit down and edit it.

Some time? The story is due tomorrow!

Look, I said, You are the best editor I know. What do you want me to do, bow at your feet?

Yes, I was rather tired, and very frustrated, and ready to flog someone.

After a good night's sleep, I awakened to find Martin absent from bed. As I stumbled downstairs, he said from the kitchen, I got up with Merry, and by the way, I'm working on your story.

I went back to bed.

After a good breakfast and a good garden, Martin and I put the girls down for a rest and he laid out a late lunch on the porch as I finished planting some lavender starts.

I listened to the wind chimes singing and ate a slice of chicken-spinach pizza while he read through the story again, silently this time, pen scratching away. I watched him as he drew huge exes through section after section. Elspeth awakened.

Martin is one fine editor, a one-man workshop. I really do mean it. He respected the story by cutting out all the flab that belittled it. "I feel as if I'm really getting to know the characters now," he said, "And as if I'm getting to know the story." And then he handed me his edits and went away, hauling Elspeth on his hip.

I went back to the computer, and this time, much fell away, much that was well-written but didn't belong and didn't work. One of my favorite scenes got tossed into the netherworld, and I had to admit that was the right move. Who was it who said, pick your favorite part and cut it out?
________________________________

In Quaker Meeting yesterday, I sat in the silence and this is what came:

Joy is free. But it is in the context of hard work, in discipline, that joy surprises me. And it is the brief moments of joy that make me put down my head and go back to work.

In labor, in great pain, I glimpsed Elspeth's thick black hair. For a moment I was still giving Elspeth oxygen and then, in the seconds when Martin snipped the umbilical cord, Elspeth was suddenly wholly separate from me.

And what is suffering in the face of such joy?