Starting Draft Two of my WIP

Baking time for my current WIP is done, the timer had dinged, and now I’m writing the second draft. While this is the fun part of the writing process for me, it’s also the most difficult to explain because I believe there’s magic involved. 

In her book Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert speaks of creativity as a form of enchantment. I wrote a bit about enchantment here. Enchantment can be understood as a mystical or divine force that is available to us if we’re brave enough to allow that force to use us as conduits. Gilbert believes that creative ideas, such as ideas for books, don’t come from us but through us. It’s similar to the way Michelangelo believed that the statue was already inherent in the marble. It was up to him to discover what was already there.

I know that’s a little woo-woo, but I can’t think of a better way of explaining how I go from draft one, which is nothing more than a fleshed out outline, to draft two, which, while it still isn’t perfect, is much closer to my vision for the story. 

The best way to illustrate this is to share the first draft for Down Salem Way alongside the final draft. Normally, I wouldn’t share the first draft of anything I’ve written with anyone, including myself, but since we’re among friends I decided to go for it.

Chapter 1 of the first draft of Down Salem Way

The sun in California is brighter somehow. In other places, it appears round and yellow as certain as the day is come, in California the skylight appears happier, stronger, even. In Carmel, along the central coast, the sun spent most of the day most days hidden behind beach clouds, leaving the weather cooler than it would be when the clouds finally burned away and the golden rays touched the lapping ocean waves, the sprinkles of sand, even the concrete sidewalks near the homes and touristy shops up and down the hills of the town. In those moments, after the sun appeared, it was as if the sun didn’t care to shine anywhere else in the world.

The coastal scenes in Carmel, California was in some ways not so different than the coastal scenes in Salem, Massachusetts, James thought. There was something soothing about the nearby ocean. Throughout his life, then and now, he was always drawn to the ocean, perhaps because being near the end of the world, listening to the tide as it slapped the beach, smelling the salty air, feeling the cool breeze reminded him of Salem, and no matter where he was in the world his heart, even when it ceased beating, was always in Salem. James sat at his desk and looked through the window, watching the shapeshifting coastline only steps away. He slipped his hand under his shirt, felt his heart beating, and sighed. There were moments when he still thought it had all been a dream. Even after four years, he was still getting used to it, waking up with the sun. Seeing the brightness of the day. There were still days when he forgot who, or what, he was and he thought he should run for cover whenever he saw the dimpled yellow rays reflecting off the grass in his yard or sparkling like glass on the ocean. There were some days when it was still a surprise when he woke up at dawn and grew tired after dark. And there were still times when he missed being awake in the night hours when all the world was quiet, but this is what he had begged for and this is what he had. And, really, that was all right. He pushed the odd longings for the night aside whenever he saw his Sarah smile. Sweet Sarah. Beautiful Sarah. The girl who gave his life meaning Sarah. Even though this life was still a challenge, it was a challenge he would conquer, one day at a time. He had overcome so much worse, after all.

He opened his laptop computer, opened his document, and began typing when he heard the office door creak open. He turned to see Grace, nearly six already, her golden curls bouncing as she trudged cautiously toward him balancing a tray with a half-filled cup of coffee and an egg croissant. James smiled at his daughter. He never tired of seeing her in the daylight.

“Thank you, Gracie.” He took the tray from her hands. “Are you having your breakfast too?”

“I already ate. Mommy is taking me and Johnny to school.”

“Ah.” James nodded in his most serious manner. “You’re a big girl now who goes to school, are you?”

“I’m starting kindergarten soon!”

“And Johnny goes to school too?”

“He’s just little. He goes with the babies.”

For comparison’s sake, here’s the final draft:

10 January 1691, Monday

The winters are colder here, I’m certain of it. I feel it so in my bones, which feel brittle, as though they shall shatter like icicles against a hammer. The sky looks nearly as it does in England, gradations of gray from near-black to tinder-slate that shed wind, sleet, or snow depending on its mood. Whilst England grows cold enough in the sunless months, in Salem the sky disappears beneath a woolen blanket. I cannot step one foot outside without feeling liquid ice in my veins, but such is life in Massachusetts in January.

This morn Lizzie laughed as I piled on layers of clothing in an attempt to stay warm: my woolen flannel underdrawers, my linen shirt, my thickest worsted leggings, perhaps not the most fashionable, but they are my warmest; my woolen suit of doublet, jerkin, breeches, and my heavy coat, the deep blue one Lizzie says matches my eyes, though what matters my eyes when I cannot see for the blizzard? Lizzie pulled my coat close to my ears and knotted my scarf near my throat so I might keep whatever warmth I take with me. I would cover myself in ten coats if I could without looking ridiculous. Even as I was, Lizzie could not stifle her giggles.

“Good heavens, James. You look like a blue onion ready for the peeling.”

“And shall you peel my layers away?”

She blushed in that way I love, red-hot along her jaw. She pushes me toward the door as though she could not be rid of me soon enough.

“Perhaps when you return home. If you’re lucky.”

Wait…what?

They don’t even seem like the same book!

You’re right. They don’t seem like the same book.

When I first began writing Down Salem Way, my intention was for it to fit easily into the Loving Husband Trilogy. The Loving Husband Trilogy has a dual timeline in the past and the present and it’s written in third-person limited from either James or Sarah’s point of view. I thought it would take place after Her Loving Husband’s Return as well as during the Salem Witch Trials, which is how I wrote the first draft. The excerpt from the first draft above takes place after the events of Her Loving Husband’s Return.

The Enchantment, or the Muse, or the Gods of Storytelling, or however you want to conceptualize it, didn’t like the past and present storylines for Down Salem Way. I tried every which way I could think of to make the story work with the dual timeline, but I wasn’t happy with it.

During an extended baking time (I can’t remember precisely how long the break between drafts was, but it was months), I read Marilynne K. Roach’s book The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege. Actually, this was a reread for me since I had read Roach’s book, as well as her Six Women of Salem, while I wrote Her Dear & Loving Husband. I wanted to refresh my memory since I was writing about Salem during the witch hunts again.

When I reread Roach’s day-by-day chronicle, something clicked in my brain. What if Down Salem Way was strictly historical fiction? And what if it was James’ diary, his own day-by-day chronicle as he experienced the madness of the Salem Witch Trials as they happened?

Can you hear the “Aha!” moment from where you are?

I wanted to see if I was onto something, so I wrote a few scenes from James’ POV as though he were writing in his diary in the late 17th century. Once I started, I never looked back. I knew I had hit on the angle I needed for this particular story.

It’s not as easy as that, though, because I had to let go of my original vision for the book. All of the present-day scenes that I spent months writing had to be deleted from my manuscript. It’s never easy to do, but I knew that if I wanted Down Salem Way to be the best book it could be, I had to begin again.

This kind of extreme revision between draft one and draft two doesn’t happen with every book. With some books I have things figured out well enough from the get-go. Every once in a while, though, I know that I have to be open to changing my original concept. I have to go with the flow. I have to let the book do its thing, often without any help from me. Woo-woo again, I know, but I believe that there’s an element of the creative process that is indefinable an unexplainable.

For my current WIP, I had what I thought was a solid idea, but then I started second guessing myself and coming up with excuses about why that idea wouldn’t work. I pulled the story this way, tugged it there, but I couldn’t get the revised idea to work. I read widely during this time, because I never know where the spark of creativity will come from, and finally I read a certain book (I’ll elaborate after the book is out–spoilers!) and I realized that my initial idea was the right one after all.

I wrote in this post about how when we’re stuck we need to keep going, as in continuing to put words on paper. That’s how I figured out my second draft. I continued writing in my book journal as new ideas occurred to me. I kept reading books that I thought might help, and I’d journal about those new ideas. Ideas led to other ideas led to other ideas until one day I was able to pull together a story that will work. It’s not perfect yet, but at least now my story has enough meat on the bones that I have something to work with. For our stories to be their best, we need to be willing to make changes wherever necessary.

(P.S.: Fans of the Loving Husband Series have probably already spotted this. If you think the first draft of Down Salem Way looks remarkably similar to And Shadows Will Fall, you would be correct. While I ended up trashing the present-day scenes from Down Salem Way, they fit perfectly with And Shadows Will Fall so I recycled them. That’s why you should never delete anything, half-baked ideas or not. Keep your unused writing in a file. Sometimes something that doesn’t fit in one project will be perfect for another.)