A(nother) False Start

Where I discover how the price of paper can spoil a good story.

You'd be justified in accusing me of reticence during the last couple of years in writing about my creative writing efforts. Beyond learning about what motivates my first novel's main protagonist, or reading other unrelated pieces of short prose and poetry, there isn't much to see. But my focus when tapping a keyboard millions of times has indeed been on a debut novel (or, as those closer to me refer to it: 'The Book'). It was a big book of 185,000 words, more of which later. One of several I've plotted out – and in Book #2's case, currently writing scenes for – they're part of an even chunkier, interconnected series. Yes, perchance to dream / delude oneself, etc., etc. But writerly dreams do come true, so the publishing industry's middle-(wo)men keep telling me.

Last weekend I concluded a major edit of The Book. I won't bore you with the myriad structural, style and grammatical details, but several agents had advised the original be radically cut down before I submitted it (something to do with the price of paper and marketing budgets). So it's now much closer to their suggested 120,000 word target for a debut speculative fiction novel. I still think the original was richer in character detail, world-building and plot nuances, but I would say that, wouldn't I?

The casualties of this major edit (the equivalent of deleting every third word) included the death of fifteen fictional people, erasure of some scintillating technologies and wiping several locations from the map of the little universe I'd created. But this much shorter version certainly feels tighter, especially during its treacherous second act; a bit like a middle-aged man attending a gym thrice a week (a friend tells me...). It's also perhaps more accessible for newer readers to the genre. Maybe. There are much better judges of commercial potential and its realisation out there. It's why I'm still willing to pay one of them, if they take a liking to my novels and myself. The smaller-ego alternative is throwing them into that large South American river (the books, not the agent).

Many of The Book's scenes have been passed under the keen noses of my critique group – the 'Coven+1' – which was birthed during a Covidian Lockdown (remember those?). Views were varied on the first scene's merits, so I had to do some serious thinking. So serious, I could hear my self-imposed deadlines whooshing by. (This is what most of my deadlines do, if I'm being honest. But I believe they can be linked to something called 'professional courtesy' when you earn money from meeting them, but not if you're told you won't. This is called 'being too busy to contact you'.)

So here's the devastating news: One major piece of collateral damage from this traumatic edit is The Book's very first scene. I know, I was as shocked as you should be now.

This scene has an interesting history: It's mutated over its lifetime, like every scene does, but in The Book's earliest draft it was one of several in the first chapter, before squeezing out all others to become the only scene, and then finally migrating into a prologue. I think infinitely repeated submission advice to 'get straight down to the nitty-gritty' was the primary cause of this. It's very important for the beginning of your novel to be the best you can possibly make it. It's what agents, publishers and potential book buyers are going to read first and most of. So I put on my big mummy pants and read out loud all 700 words of The Book's prologue to a bunch of harder-nosed critics I'd discovered on the other side of town. They pulled no punches with their curt critiques (fortunately, beer and a warming fire helped soften the blow).

To summarise their assessment:

• Be careful, prologues have fallen out of fashion.

• You need to include dialogue to help your readers engage quicker with your characters.

• The first paragraph is misleading/distracting/'interesting'. Best delete it.

• Didn't a famous author say something negative* about writing novels in the present tense?
  * I confess this last is self-criticism. Its message still irks me, but let's see what happens.

This hammered-home, authoritative consensus led to a wavering firm conclusion to dump my dastardly prologue. Teeth were clenched, sanity checked and (un)conscience examined in the making of this decision. But I'm now content with it. I'm currently rewriting several of The Book's initial chapters to incorporate much of the excised content, using a more concrete and perhaps less intense style.

The most obvious and immediate benefit of this emotion-laden ditching of my prologue is that I can present it to you below with very different expectations of fear and favour, because you are all too kind to me. I feel better knowing someone may have voluntarily perused it and thought 'well, it's not so bad'. But it may be time to ditch my delicate new writer's ego and develop a thicker skin for the rest of my writing journey. Or maybe not. I suspect the answer lies in the doing, not a multitude of tellings.

So, here it is. Something I wrote which you'll only see on this screen. Perhaps...

As ever, thank you for taking the time to be here and I look forward to your comments.

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My first time with Tom is abysmal. He’s patient, but I’m a poor student. The mask restricts my vision. I struggle to breathe, unused to the rubber filling my mouth. Hand signals aren’t enough. I go down too deep, too fast, impatient to learn. But he persists, controlling my fear, nurturing seeds of confidence.

His torch lights up a submerged street, a bright spotlight on a dark stage. It’s my first glimpse of our hidden world, forged from a catastrophe both personal and collective. Fish dart between redundant lampposts and seaweed-draped signs. I follow him past houses, their broken windows looking down on us, accusing our still breathing bodies. A pub sign lies jammed under a car tyre, detached from its hinges by the sea’s night-time rampage through our City. It triggers memories of warm, snug places, of a life with laughter.

Then the child looms out of the darkness, its half-eaten body suspended in an open doorway.

Tom had warned me about what we might see. The aftermath of an event I still wake from, desperately drawing breath, arms thrashing in my nightmare’s torrid waters. I try to control my breathing as he’d taught me. But when a writhing eel emerges out of the child’s fish-flayed skull, vivid imaginings blend with night-time terrors to overwhelm any rational thinking.

I can’t scream but I still try, expelled air erupting around me. Twisting to escape my ghouls, feet lacking purchase to flee, my weightlessness becomes a burden. So I panic. Never do that down here if you want to stay alive – and I’m desperate to, despite my body’s intransigence. It was almost a decade since they’d compelled me to learn of its inexorable fate. This isn’t how they’d said I would die. This is too quick, too painless. My mutated genes aren’t so compassionate or benign.

Strong hands grasp my arms and our masks align. Tom’s wide eyes bore into mine, urging me to stop struggling.

Yes, I remember. We can’t go up, not yet. Look at my buddy, forget the child. Look past it. Forget the cascading, deadly waves. Look through it all and bury the past. Look up instead, at the bright sunlight glinting on the waters of another uncertain day.

Look at Tom. Breathe… calmly. Again. Good. Rise… slowly. Yes, better. You’ve got this, Paysha, I tell myself.

I rip off my mask as soon as we surface into sparkling daylight, desperate to breathe real air. Tom hauls me, spluttering in protest, into his hover. I’d already turned the City’s collective tragedy into my own, and our dive has renewed my survivor’s guilt. I huddle in the craft’s hard shell, a shaking ball of futility, spilling unwanted tears of self-pity. Tom welcomes the opportunity to comfort me with more than words, removing my equipment, gently stroking my hair and brushing away my tears. He still yearns for someone to reciprocate his feelings and return his embrace. Someone who needs his affection. Someone who could never be me.

The Flood had forced us to leave our dead unburied, but not what belonged to them. As survivors, we still need what the sea had inundated within a few calamitous minutes. The City’s sunken goods and its citizen’s possessions will still be there tomorrow, along with their decaying ghosts and my replenished fears. To pillage, eat, use or barter whatever we find in the gloomy, decomposing graveyard below is how we have to live. Stinking scavengers are what we’ve become. Scrounging, bubble-blowing rats are all most of us can be.

For some, it wasn’t worth the fight. They’d waded into the sea’s stinking morass, pleading to be reunited with dead families and lost friends. For others, it was enough to remain alive. But my ticking clock isn’t wound as tight. Fewer than two years remain of the decade the doctors had estimated my body would linger on. Then it will start disintegrating in a pointless war with itself. Slowly at first, they’d said. Then more painfully. Even after all that has happened to me, I still refuse to accept it.

I don’t want to die here, teetering on a decaying margin of pitiable humanity.

I don’t want to die at all.

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