First Drafts, Latest Drafts

Of delays, drafts, process, and fighting perfectionism

2023 has been a year of, “I think I might be taking on more than I can chew.”

And then I keep trying to take everything in. Everything still seems doable and impossible all at once.

Just yesterday I was in a last-minute, end-of-the-day, end-of-the-week Zoom call and actually heard these words come out of my mouth: “I think in January that there’s a good chance I can start taking it a little easier.”

I’m not complaining, exactly.

I honestly think everything I’m currently working on is worth working on.

But as someone who has espoused works in the past like Effortless, Essentialism, The One Thing, and other books that promote getting more done by focusing on less, I’m fully aware I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth now.

Dreading Saturdays

Lately, I’ve been dreading Saturdays. Since last September, every Saturday I’ve endeavored to release a serialized chapter of my novel Eighty-Sixed.

Because of work commitments (see above and below), lately, Saturdays suddenly appear and I don’t have an updated chapter to share.

“Next week. Definitely next week,” I say nearly every week.

Then another Saturday arrives.

I love this novel. I do. I can totally see Eighty-Sixed as a multi-season show on streaming television (though getting it out in book form will be joyous enough).

The fact it is already written makes me very happy. But the rewrites (which is what I’ve been doing here on Substack) haven’t always come easily. The rewrites have been infinitely more complicated than writing the first draft.

When I force myself to follow the process and write for just 30 minutes first thing in the morning, I make amazing progress. The weeks I’ve consistently put out chapters are the weeks I’ve followed that bird-by-bird (Just edit one page today!) process. Small steps lead to the longest journeys.

This week, I managed to perhaps rewrite three paragraphs. But I’ve recorded several hours of video, edited several hours more, narrated even more than that, held multiple meetings, launched a new website (and have been tackling constant bugs), am prepping the launch of an online community and learning platform, and literally as I type this, I just now got a message that another podcast has been edited and is ready for my review.

It’s a deluge at the moment.

But that’s how things often happen.

I can want to focus on “The ONE Thing” all I want, but sometimes I get “ALL THE THINGS” instead.

Sometimes my lawn desperately needs rain and gets none, and other weeks I get so much rain I have to mow twice in one week.

The difficulty in all this is not to bang my head in frustration when I feel like I’m working myself to the bone and still not delivering as quickly as I’d like. Like everyone, I can only do what I can do, and the only next step I can take is the next step.

More Eighty-Sixed is coming, I promise.

In the meantime, I had this idea:

For those of you who have been reading along, below are the original three chapters before the Substack rewrites of the past year. These are the three chapters originally submitted to various literary agencies (I had a couple of nibbles but no bites). I provide these as a compare/contrast exercise for those of you who enjoy behind-the-scenes stuff.

Thanks for your patience.

The Pomeranians (Original Draft)

Compared to Substack version here

Frankie hung up less than an hour before with the final words, “Have a good life,” leaving Becca sobbing into a napkin scavenged out of the McDonald’s bag.  The fast food refuse was still there, sitting on her laboratory table, crinkled and unbalanced, soggy grey grease stains ogling at her like sad mocking open mouthed characters from a surrealist cartoon. 

The napkin oozed with the stench of fries long gone cold, not necessarily stale, but still not particularly edible at the bottom of the bag. Abandoned spud rubble. Burnt cooking oil. 

The smell alone made her feel heavier, slouched and overweight, though she hadn’t even touched the dinner Sam and Drake had brought back for her.  This, despite being the one who’d suggested they make a food run in the first place, that they continue working, that they were so close, so very, very close, to changing everything and making everything the way it was.  

As it should be.

Becca was consumed with the work, swallowed whole to the point of ignorance regarding minutes soaring by and muddled bullet point news items that took full occupancy of everyone else’s thoughts and conversations. Having not checked the forecast in weeks, she dressed inadequately, a flimsy pale blue dress that after a predicted (but unbeknownst to her) torrential downpour clung like plastic wrap in the most unflattering ways to curves that she’d expected to be hidden by the baggy boxiness of her attire. 

So obsessed had she been that she’d remained oblivious to the point of blindness to the three dozen European tourists who’d just been viciously beheaded by terrorists in Morocco, or the Congressional stalemate that threatened once again to bring the US economy to a crippling halt, this time for good, this time for certain, government shutdowns a simple inevitability, bankruptcy facing businesses at every turn. 

And her consummation in the details of her work had been so immersive and complete that for three days she avoided Frankie’s calls so as not to be brought out of the laboratory, away from her work, back to the work of being home where things were not what they once had been, where they were, so sad and so true, not in any form with which she could live in the current state of things. 

“Twenty-three voicemails, Becca. Seriously?” were the first words he spoke when she finally answered the phone. “I’ve left you twenty-three voicemails.”

“Frankie, you know if I don’t answer, that I’m working. That’s always how it’s been.”

“But you always call back,” Frankie said.

“I’m sorry, I’m just so close.”

“You’ve been so close for years,” Frankie said, then paused and cleared his throat. 

Here it was.  

But still Becca could barely keep her eyes away from her computer screen. She slapped the laptop closed and draped her hand over her eyes, forcing herself to listen to her husband’s impatient breathing on the other end of the phone. 

“I picked up the dogs this afternoon.”

“Frankie.”

“I’m taking them with me.”

“Frankie,” she said again. “Don’t.” 

It wouldn’t matter. 

“I don’t even know the last time you were home to feed them, Becca, so I’m taking them. You can’t do that to dogs.”

“They’re not your dogs,” Becca said, though honestly she didn’t care.  

Semantics.  

What was his was hers, and the opposite should apply, but usually didn’t. 

At this moment all she cared about was the fact that she was finally, acutely aware of a horrible, horrible lapse of judgement on her part and the fact that she had obviously absconded with undeserved liberties regarding Frankie’s level of patience and that, though her work — if she were honest — was the most important thing in her life, her relationship — her marriage to Frankie — was just as important. 

Or at least very close.

“They’re as much mine as they are yours, but the difference is that even though you bought them — for far too much money — I’m the one who is responsible for them.”

“Don’t do this, Frankie. Please.”

There it was. 

“I’m already gone, Becca.”

“Don’t say that.”

“You’ve been out of the picture for four years.”

“That’s not true.”

“You’re right,” Frankie shot back. “It’s more like the last fourteen. Hell, the last twenty-four.”

“I’ll cut back.”

“Cut it entirely.”

“What? No. I mean…”

“Cut it entirely, Becca. Walk out right now. Burn your research.”

“It’s too important,” she answered, astounded that Frankie would insist on a level of such extremity. “You know that. I can’t believe you’d ask. This will bring the greatest moment since the creation of the world. This will allow us to see the creation of the world.”

But still Frankie took the dogs.

Yellow (Original Draft)

Compared to Substack version here.

Rain shot like bullets against the water’s surface, ricocheting in stinging rivets back into Jeremy’s face as he perilously held his brother’s head like a football, tucked tightly against his shoulder. They were bobbing in foamy rushing currents, Jeremy gasping for air each time he was pulled under, pushing David above him so as not to be drawn down with him, a sinker on a fishing line, kicking furiously all the while with worn out burning legs as he scraped the water’s surface with his free arm. 

A deep gash across David’s forehead poured forth with dark blood in a seemingly endless cascade that would momentarily wash clean away each time a hard wave poured across his face. But the blood would immediately start flowing again in crimson rivulets, over David’s shuttered eyes, splattered like a port wine stain across his cheek. David was all dead weight, though he was not yet dead.

The threatening temptation to succumb to the undertow, to drift downward like heavy lumbering stones, was nearly too much to fight. Jeremy didn’t want to fight any longer. 

Just as the rain had swelled down in low dark clouds more than an hour before, David’s rented kayak had capsized less with a thunderous crash than a simple snapping crack as David scraped the craft, yellow and pointed on the ends like a floating fiberglass banana, across an unmoving rock hidden in a liquid shadowy cloak mere millimeters beneath the surface. 

Jeremy was ahead a solid one hundred feet when David cried out, a muted swear swept away in the wind by the roar of the river. David frantically paddled forward, as if increased speed would improve buoyancy, but Jeremy could see the kayak rapidly taking in water and sinking. In minutes it would be a permanent landmark at the bottom of the river.

Scrambling as the raging water continued it’s forward rush, David twisted in his seat and pawed at the edges of the storage space behind him, clumsily unhitching the cables holding the lid shut, and began pulling out gear, tossing food into the current as he struggled to extract the core of his equipment from the bottom of the kayak. 

“You’re losing provisions!” Jeremy called backwards. 

He’d cantilevered his own kayak to run perpendicular to the river’s path, madly paddling to maintain his position and close the gap between David’s craft and his own.

“I’m going to lose everything!” David called back, as his backpack wedged tightly, swollen thick with water, between the rubber-lined lips of the storage compartment. 

Releasing himself from the kayak’s harness, David pulled himself out of the hull and twisted around, balancing his knees precariously upon his seat, the kayak shifting ever more violently against the pounding of the water combined with David’s uncertain equilibrium. 

“Your paddle!” Jeremy screamed out as the equally yellow paddle, feebly balanced on the front of David’s kayak, slid into the water and roared toward Jeremy. 

David seemingly paid no mind, his full attention on extracting his pack. 

They were both moving now, David haphazardly coursing toward the river’s edge in jagged fits and starts with Jeremy slashing deeply against the current with his paddle to close the gap between them before David’s kayak disappeared completely below the surface. What he’d do once he reached David, he did not know. Neither kayak was designed for two people. They were both thankfully wearing their lifejackets, but once David was in the water, until he managed to get himself onto the shore, there was little to keep him from being tossed down the river like a paper cup a mile or more before making his way out.

The gap between their kayaks was now less than ten feet, the shore with it’s overhanging brush line an equal distance away.

“I’ve almost got it!” David shouted over his shoulder to Jeremy, and with another solid tug the pack came loose. 

Jeremy was already stretching an arm outward, reaching to grab hold of David’s craft, the rain falling now in heavier drops.

“Hah!” David called out, kneeling high on his seat as he spun around with his pack now held high over his head with both hands like he’d just won the Stanley Cup trophy as a branch from the quickly closing gap of the shoreline brushed just inches above Jeremy’s head, and crashed solidly against David’s face, an audibly snapping crack, flipping him backwards out of the boat and into the water.

As Jeremy dove in after his brother a rampage of conflicting thoughts and memories rocketed through his mind in a uniform cacophony. 

Their decision to go on this backcountry adventure with their pittance of an inheritance after their mother’s death the year before. 

The time they’d once stolen Peppermint Patties from the local convenience store and were so ravaged with guilt they biked to confession that very afternoon. 

David’s wife and children, and what he could possibly say to them if they ever made it out of this alive. 

Checks and Balances (Original Draft)

Compared to Substack version here.

Gordon was balancing his checkbook, once again, on a Friday night, the night of the week which of all the nights of the week for many years now had been the most meaningless. Tuna fish sandwiches and carrot sticks on disposable paper plates. Running laundry - the same green shirts and the same khaki pants - through the top loading washing machine that after far too many trips to the hardware store he finally got to stop leaking. Maybe a pint of chocolate ice cream if it was on sale, which this week it was not. 

He didn’t enjoy television, and cared little for new movie releases, so those were out for Friday nights. The rare occasions when he actually went to the theater were frustrating experiences anyway. Seats so cold they seemed wet. The stale, damp and unidentifiable smell of the lobby that was masked by the wafting aroma of expensive popcorn. The accumulation of years of spilled substances so thick that his shoes smacked with a sticky clicking sound when he lifted them from the floor. Unflushed toilets with urine on the seats and globs of wet toilet paper that had been smacked onto the ceiling and left to dry in the men’s room. He’d rather stay home, and so most nights he did.

But Marie had liked movies, and television, and even books. Basically Marie liked anything with worlds where unbelievable events unfolded, transpired, and resolved within an hour or two. So for Marie, Gordon would go to movies and often forgot about the discomfort of the theater, finding the most enjoyment not from the films themselves but from listening to Marie over-analyze the movie afterward over a cup of decaf at Waffle House. 

“No, it wasn’t that at all!” she’d protest with her lovely tittering laugh, brushing her auburn hair behind her ear and rapidly tapping her chin — onetwothreefourfive - in that manner of hers that she absentmindedly employed whenever she wanted to make a point while still trying to decide what the point was that she was trying to make. Then Marie would talk as long as Gordon would let her about various themes from the movie, her favorite quotes, constantly asking, “And do you remember when…?”

But this Friday night Gordon would be home again, as he’d been for the last thirty years, ever since Marie had laid in hospice with Gordon and her mother (now gone for fifteen years herself), keeping watch as her breathing turned from short silent whispers to a vibrato rattle purring in harsh staccato rambles up from her lungs and out her mouth where breath that had long gone rancid puffed out with utter lifelessness. And after that Friday night all those years ago, Gordon rarely did much of anything on the Friday nights to follow, or any other night for that matter.

A clattering noise, a glass bottle perhaps, bouncing on concrete and ringing without breaking, brought Gordon up from the round formica table in the kitchen corner to peer through the slatted window blinds into the darkness of the driveway outside. Silence and blackness, a cat perhaps, or just the contents of his heaping recycling bucket settling. But then there it was again, and with it hushed and panicked whispers, neighbor kids perhaps, or worse. Gordon turned off the kitchen light and flipped on the low-wattage bulb outside the door that lead from the kitchen to the driveway. Stillness and quiet. But that didn’t necessarily mean whoever was out there had departed. 

He hadn’t a gun, though in recent years as neighbors installed new security systems they couldn’t afford and as the stores on Maplethorpe Avenue barred their windows to cut back on late night burglaries, he thought on more than one occasion about finally breaking down and buying a small handgun, maybe take some lessons. Maybe he’d enjoy that, the learning of something new, though he doubted it. 

But after that afternoon, he was glad he’d never spent the money. Things were already tight, but now Gordon knew he’d be tighter than ever before. Turning the kitchen light back on and closing the blinds, he returned to his checkbook and the notepad beside it which he’d used for years to sketch out his plan for when his job was no more, for he’d known for almost as long as Marie had been dead that his eventual unemployment was an inevitability. 

Gordon’s own parents had died before even having had a chance to meet Marie, but they’d left the young couple a gift, nevertheless, a modest inheritance, which the idealistic Hewing Newlyweds invested in the formation of a small grocery store, with just seven short aisles filled with staples, Heinz Ketchup and Kellogg’s cereals, fresh produce provided by a half dozen local farmers, a small meat counter. It was a comfortable place located in what would now be called a strip mall, a small line of five unique stores on the eastern side of Burkett, so close to the Ohio River you could smell Pennsylvania, he’d often joke. 

Gordon and Marie would sneak kisses as they busily passed each other while scrambling throughout the store each day, directing their dozen employees and learning the names of all their customers. It was pleasant, being a part of something with meaning, a comfortable place where locals bought what they needed to provide for their own families. 

“When we have children, they’ll never know life without the store,” Marie would daydream. “They’ll grow up always knowing this place and someday it’ll be theirs.”

But they never had children, and as Marie was slowly dying, Gordon read with a growing discomfort in the Burkett Chronicle each day the news that SuperStore was expanding in eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania, and a new SuperStore location would open in Burkett by year’s end, now that zoning had been approved and construction initiated. 

Marie died believing that Hewing’s Market would live forever.