as lulu would say, "Son of a pup!"

[dragonlady7]

Yow.
Well.
I'm sort of reduced to the kind of amusingly odd expletives my teammate Holly Lulu often uses. (Her two favorites seem to be "Son of a pup" and "Shitballs!")
I'm lying around in bed and getting the day off to a lovely lazy start by working on the novel. More later on why this is an unusual schedule.
But.
I just had a thought, in this most recent draft, about reincorporating something from an early, early draft. Just an event I'd long ago cut, that I'm thinking of maybe revisiting. "Well," I thought, "I'll go see how I phrased it then." It's unlikely I'll be able to reuse any of the actual words, but it can save a lot of imaginative time just to read a previous draft. Even totally rewritten, having thought it out once before can make everything much easier.

So I went excavating back to the early days of this novel. Now, the scene I'm thinking of, must date to about... I'd say Major Revision Number Three or so. I started the novel in '03, I know. Major Revision #1 was in the summer of that year. Number Three must be... hell, sometime in '04 or '05.

I have found the draft I'm looking for.
It is terrible.
I mean, it is really, God-awful, unreadable.

She shrieked, and launched herself at him, clawing at his face with her fingers and battering at his shoulders with her fists. He put his arm up to protect his face, and caught at her hands. "Girl!" he exclaimed. "It's all right! I won't hurt you!" But she was beyond reason, beyond language, and he had no choice but to subdue her or watch her injure herself on his armor.
He pushed her away and stepped out of her reach as she staggered, and when she came after him again-- her bravery was astonishing-- he caught her with his cloak in both hands and wrapped it tightly around her, pinning her arms to her body. She screamed, and struggled mightily, but he was far larger than she was, and had the advantage of having planned ahead. He held her firmly in his arms and she couldn't get free.
"I'm sorry," he said miserably, knowing he was certainly not helping her mental state. Shrieking and weeping as she struggled, she was in danger of getting an arm free, and he had to haul her around to press her against a tree. Trapped between the immovable trunk and his substantial body, she couldn't move so much as a limb.

What the fuck was I thinking?? Whose style is that incompetently ripped from? I can't even tell, it's that poorly-done. I mean-- no, I'm not sharing the whole page with you. I wouldn't do that to you. But it goes on and on like that, and every sentence has a comma and an and in the middle, and possibly two or even three.
I love his observation set apart with -- dashes in the middle of the sentence. Because that's really, you know, readable. I mean, all about the showing, not telling, right?
Also I might mention that the paragraph two above the one I started with also began with "she shrieked, and", for a nice repetition to no useful or poetic effect.
Jesus.
I'll stop now. But I'm... I don't know if I'm completely horrified at how bad I was, or if I should be smug that I'm apparently better now? I don't know. But it wasn't that long ago. And the whole draft-- I mean the whole thing is like that. It's all that bad. I just picked a bit that didn't have the character names in it because frankly I'm embarrassed by them too.

I shouldn't need to be so down on Past!Me, but I guess Present!Me is an insecure bitch too and needs to put others down to feel better.
I still even have this particular scene in the current draft. Here, here's a little self-trial. Let's see how the current revision stacks up.

She stared at me wide-eyed for a moment, mouth open-- her lips were pink-- and then she erupted into a flurry of motion, getting to her feet and coming toward me. She had a knife in her hand, I realized a bit belatedly, and I threw up my forearm to ward off the blow she directed at my face. She'd taken the knife the dead man had dropped. She was quick. She'd brawled before.
"Easy," I said, desperately hoping she spoke Etalin. She was vicious, and slashed again at me, ducking to aim at my midsection. Of course-- she had been overpowered once and obviously wasn't keen on it happening again. "Easy, girl. I won't hurt you. It's all right now."
I held out my hands, palms open, both to ward her off and to show her I was not trying to fight her. But I knew how frightening I looked: I had spent enough time among the Saxeans to know that my garb, my tattoos, my very body itself was at the least unnerving if not terrifying.
She hissed and slashed at my hands. I closed my gloved hand around the knife blade and twisted it out of her grasp, continuing the movement to enfold her in my other arm. I turned and pinned her between my body and a tree, and with a final wrench completed the motion to disarm her. The knife thudded to the ground and I kicked it away.
With a shriek she kicked at me, her feet pattering ineffectually against my shin greaves. She was trying to kick my knee backwards but didn't have the angle to land a square blow. Even in panic, this girl was thinking of strategy. "Stop," I said, gentle but urgent. "Stop, you'll hurt yourself." But I didn't dare release her. She had cut through my glove and my palm stung fiercely. She squealed and squirmed, but I was heavy, and had taken a few captives in my day.

Fuck, I still do that -- thing!!!
Shitballs. But at least I'm showing something with it, besides what a prat I am. Right? He's observing something visible rather than thinking something generalized. [The color of her lips is notable because her skin is very dark and he's never seen anyone like her before.]
Right?
*dies*

I'll just be over here for a while, then. Doing... something else.

So the car's in the shop today, and hopefully they'll fix that thing it's been doing for two winters now, when every time it gets below freezing, the computer decides that the engine isn't turning over fast enough so it must be damaged, so it cuts the power to the gas engine and gives an error, and while restarting the car gets the engine working, the error message won't go away, so the whole stupid mileage-monitoring screen is blanked out and there's this giant You Are About To Self Destruct exclamation point up by the speedometer on the dash. And it's really motherfucking annoying.
Meanwhile they're giving Z a loaner and I was going to take it so I could get to work and thence to practice, but Z realized he's no idea when they're going to want to give him his car back and get their loaner back, so I'm going to have to bus it and have him ferry me to practice, and on the one hand that's quite nice because I'm much more likely to get to practice if I don't have to wait 15 minutes for the parking shuttle, but on the other hand it means I can't run errands today, so I will not be wearing a sash or a tiara to the Debutante Brawl, and also I will not be buying anything exotic to prepare for the bake sale.
Also when will I be doing the baking for the bake sale and also for the team meeting I promised I'd bake for?
Hm.
Friday night I won't be home until 9:15 and there's an e:strip party then, and then Saturday I work 9-5. Decorating for the Brawl starts at 7. But the Brawl itself doesn't start until 9. So maybe... maybe it's not unreasonable to do the baking Saturday afternoon? Fresher is better for baked goods, right? Except maybe they should be allowed to cool before I package them for sale, so they don't wind up mushy....
Well, it's looking like Saturday or never, and now I'm glad I didn't volunteer to help decorate, and I hope nobody minds that I didn't volunteer.

OK I stop with the brainspewing now. I don't know if I can force myself to read that old version of that scene though. Will I cry? Maybe not. Maybe it'll make me feel much more better about how much better I am. Really I am better. Aren't I better? Oh God.

Comments

[mother2012.livejournal.com]

You really are being down on yourself. The first (third) draft isn't all that bad for something you ended up dumping. I like the scene, and each sentence is fine in and of itself.

And yes, the second version is *much* better.

That's what rewriting is for, no?

I don't see anything wrong with dashes as punctuation, but I do think they need to be carefully considered before leaving then as final. In this case " --her lips were pink-- , I would probably say something like, "-- some part of my brain had time to note how startling her pink lips were --".

Overall, though, I think that plot trumps good writing. Awful writing trumps everything, of course, but a good plot is the most important to getting a reader intrigued, and yours are always fascinating. I know I haven't actually gone and *read* it, but I *am* interested in doing so.

[forodwaith.livejournal.com]

My first drafts are still like that -- all adverbs and cliches. ::sigh:: I have to learn how to do better on the first try.

Anyways, I think you just have to tell yourself "look how much I've learned since then" because if you think of it any other way you'll be toto depressed.