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Novelists generally don’t like talking about a work in progress. So many things will change before the final edition, and often where you think you’re headed ends up nowhere close to where you need to go. But I’ve got a solid structure, a fair bit of plot, and collared some characters I’ve been groping after for a very long time. So here goes:
The novel happens now, and follows a jester-like figure who may, or may not be, several centuries old. On his journey he meets a wise-ass thirteen year-old runaway and a diminutive, agoraphobic Elvis impersonator with bright red hair. Together, they make a quixotic pilgrimage to Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee. Sound crazy? It is, and writing the first draft in 9 weeks dearly drove me nuts. I spent more than a few manic nights on the threshold between sleeping and being awake, scribbling hundreds of pages, most of it shit.
But back to the story. At Graceland, our heroes witness something appalling. I won’t begin to tell you what. Now, cut to the immediate present (six weeks after the incident), and our jester walks into a hospital in Ontario blindfolded, with a staff lashed to a length of bone, and sits down on the floor. He is treated by a doctor who can’t shake the feeling she has met this man before. Perhaps she has, perhaps she hasn’t. But either way, the relationship they find leads her out of the rut she’s been stuck in, addresses the memories by which the jester is haunted, and together they find some kind of release.
Moving back and forth in time is vital to the structure – and therefore the meaning – of the novel. So is memory, that slippery eel. The narrative flirts with magic realism, but without quite committing (more on that later), and is based on characters I have known, and events that have happened somewhere in the world at one time or another, so while the plot might sound fantastical, the story still rings true. That’s the beauty, and the magic, of fiction.
The novelists’ job, then, is to weave compelling fiction from fact in order to approach the truth obliquely because, as W.H. Auden once wrote,
Truth, like love and sleep, resents
Approaches that are too intense
Which is why, I think, novelists generally don’t like to talk about a work in progress. It’s a tenuous process. One false move and you could lose the thread.
I’ll get to work on the second draft soon. In the meantime, I’ll post my thoughts on magic realism, and for you writers out there, talk about the challenges of writing a second draft.
Bye for now.