First Draft Finished; On to Revision

Two hundred pages and 40,000 words, the first draft is DONE. Actually, I call it the second draft. The first draft is handwritten in three spiral-bound notebooks. It only gets minor revisions when I type it into the computer, but that complete version is "Draft 2." Now, begins the heavy lifting.

Actually, since it was written with the notion of just getting it written, I think it would be a mistake to just dig in to chapter one. I think the first step is to read the thing as a whole so that I can evaluate its form and structure. I need to sort out what is missing, what might need to be moved around.


The novel was written out of sequence. I wrote all of one character's story before writing the other's. So, I know some work may be necessary to link up the stories properly. And 40,000 words is much too short. I know that in the quick pace of writing the first draft, I skipped some moments of high conflict. I passed over the critical scenes, using exposition instead of taking the reader there to that moment or demonstrating something only described. Many, many pages still remain to be written.


What I have, at least for the character of Darren, the male protagonist, is a quest story. Triggered by a sequence of events, he sets out on a journey. I need to evaluate thre trials he encounters along the way. Oh, he's no hero and the decisions he makes throughout should prove it. Nicole, his wife, is on a sort of quest as well, though her story is less conventional. Her arc is not linear. She is dislodged in time and part of her struggle is in trying to find a now, an identity in which to exist today. I need to make sure her dilemmas, and the scenes used to convey then, are as evident to the reader.


It is said that you should really know everything about your characters. "Take him home and sleep with him," one writing teacher instructed me. Know how he does things, know what concerns him, know him intimately. You want to be sure that you give them the depth they need to make them real to the reader. The issue I have now is in differentiating what it is I know and what I've related in the story. If I know this thing happened in her past, I must remember that the reader doesn't know it until I reveal it. And then, I need to consider when I want to withhold information until some later point in the novel.

The first phase of revision, then, will involve rereading the manuscript in total and creating an outline, complete with notes on ideas for revising each chapter. Only then can I begin thrashing my way through the words on the page.

Wanting to Read David Vann's Caribou Island

It seems rare anymore that I can here an interview with an author and read a review of his book and know then that I really want to read the book. This has happened with David Vann's Caribou Island.

I heard Michael Silverblatt's interview with Vann and was extremely interested. And then the reviews kept coming. I even sat down in my local Tattered Cover and read the first chapter just last week.

The story centers on a man who is obsessed on building a house on an island in already-remote-enough Alaska. From the wife's persepctive, the novel deals with dark subject matter--one of its appeals for me--including suicide. The pain and frustration that exists in the story, the desires and obsessions, and the let-downs, all served to make my very interested in the novel.

My reading list, though, is long. And it feels like a shame to cheat on all the unread books on my shelves to bypass them and go out and buy and then read something brand new. What about all of those classics I still need to read? The recent award winners? The Franzen novel I'm trying to get through now? So many things around me are begging to be read, but it won't stop me from pushing, here, a book that sounds to me worth the time--despite everything else in the queue.

Just some of the reviews of Vann's Caribou Island:
LA Times - "Darkness and loneliness in Alaska, woven into a compulsively readable story."
Telegraph UK - "Caribou Island is as bleak as the shoreline of the brooding Skilak Lake"
Guardian UK - "at his best, Vann is a forceful, potent writer"
SF Gate - "gives us a climax as haunting and realized as any in recent fiction."
NY Times - "gets to places other novels can’t touch."
Seattle Times - "won't do much for Alaska tourism."

New Yorker - "The harsh beauty of Alaska is the star turn in Vann's disturbing novel."

And the excerpt you really should read: Browse Inside Caribou Island: A Novel

Why the Paperback Edition Can Have a Very Different Cover

WSJ's Jeffery Trachtenberg looks at the new cover for the paperback edition of Brando Skyhorse's The Madonna's of Echo Park and the changes from the original hardcover edition. The reasoning for the change, in this case, is very sound. I've often wondered how in the world they have gone with covers so dramatically different than the original. Here, though, the publishers still get it wrong. The original had it's issues, but they've made the paperback even more offputting. Maybe they're hoping to capture the book club set, but they've made me less likely to pick it up.

Here are some other cases where they seemed to get it wrong.

Can you tell which one's were the original hardcover dust jackets and which covers graced the paperback?

The original black and white cover of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone was mysterious, trying to convey the bitter cold of the novel. Yet when the book went to paperback, the aesthetic was lighter, emphasizing the young female lead, complete with hanging laundry in the snow to convey they rugged domesticity. It isn't horrible, but a little light for how heavy the book is.

Alice Munro's dust jacket for the hardcover of A View From Castle Rock uses an aged portrait to convey exactly what the book is: a telling of a family history. And I don't know what exactly the publishers were thinking with the paperback cover. Nothing about the text really identifies it as as a ladies' beach read. I understand that we'll use any technique to catch the chick lit audience, but I don't know that we should go so far as to mislead readers.

I am always prepared for the cover change from hardback to paperback, and I'll always be grateful when the cover remains the same.

McCarthy's Sunset Limited Coming to HBO

HBO is set to premiere a film version of Cormac McCarthy's play The Sunset Limited, staring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. I haven't read the play or seen it performed, but this trailer is enough to ensure I'm interested.