Shitty first drafts vs. passionate first drafts

Last night, I finished a story. It should be only about 10,000 words long, but it ended up about 17,000. It's the Danjuma story, about a young dopehead with his whole ahead of him "like a thundercloud," to quote Hunter S. Thompson, whose interest in getting high and his queer aversion to "unnatural" methods (arbitrarily defined, just as they are arbitrarily defined in real life) leads him to secretly being one of the few really talented agrobiologists with an interest neuropharmaceuticals in a universe where, really, people who are depressed just use the heavy nanotechnological fix. Neuropharmacology is a lost art, an archaic study, like blacksmithing. Then a mysterious someone sends Dan a puzzling gift, a sentient gift, and Dan is forced to confront his own existence: is his hobby just about finding the best dope with which to self-destruct in the most time-consuming manner possible, or is it a worthy activity in its own right? Does Dan want to continue circling the drain slowly and alone, or can the world tempt him to be part of it? And do his so-called friends really want him to be what he wants to be, or do they just want him to stay with them and supply them with better drugs than what they can get at the local store?

Shortly after finishing it, I stumbled upon Anne Lamott's essay, "Shitty First Drafts," which I have seen contrasted with Annie Dillard's "The Writing Life." Dillard begs the writer to write passionately, to write as if your ass was on fire, to write courageously, yadda yadda yadda. It's a hell of a pep talk. Lamott's essay is much more my style: just write the damn thing.

That latter is kinda what I do. I write the whole story through, from beginning to end, looking for both the conflicts and the connections between characters, and then re-write the real story going on in there, throwing out what doesn't work and, maybe, adding a few things here and there.

The first draft is always important because it is the most passionate, the most "eyes on the fire" ready part of the tale, and I've rarely quite grasped the flame of real passion the second time through.

The other thing that drives me nuts is Dillard's advice to "write the whole thing in one sitting." Yeah, like that's gonna happen. It took me 14 days to get 17,000 words. Now it sits in a drawer for a while to either ferment or rot, and I'll go back to polishing the Zia & Polly story, and when I'm done with that I'll look for more to fix or write.

I CAN HAS FRESH TOMATOES!

Fresh!

Omaha and I have been struggling to keep our garden going. It hasn't been too much of a struggle, just a matter of picking out the weeds every now and then and making sure they get enough water. This weekend, we got to try out the first of our pleasures: some of the Stupice tomatoes are ripe. Stupice grow a small, very early, very sweet "heirloom" tomato that's great for salads and sandwiches.

Omaha and I cooked up some bacon. She had a straight-up BLT, but I also put a few leaves of basil from the garden, as well as some very mild horseradish, nothing too painful.

Sheer gastronomic bliss, a delight for the tastebuds and the nose all at once, an ecstacy waiting to happen.

There will be more, too. I have to harvest and dry the sage and oregano, and then we'll see what can really be done with fresh herbs.

The old playset is gone.

Every year for the past three years Omaha and I have been promising ourselves and the kids that we'd get them a new swingset. It's not that the old one (which has appeared in several photos here over the years) wasn't servicable-- it was, sorta-- but it was old, it was starting to rust, and its biggest flaw was that the original owners had built it too close to the Retaining Wall Of Doom. Yamaraashi-chan is now big enough her feet hit the retaining wall when she swings. But every year for the past three years, certain legal bills have piled up in the Spring, draining our resources, and denying Yamaraashi-chan and Kouryou-chan a place to play.

Ruins

This year, Omaha and I swore, no more. We've bought both the wood and the kit, and we're going to build the damn thing. But first, we had to tear out the old one. This was harder than it had looked at first: bolts were rusted solid, some so badly that we had to break them off with the sledgehammer. It wasn't as sad a job as it sounds, and even Kouryou-chan helped, finding 5/16 and 3/16 sockets for the ratchet as we worked, ferrying tools around, and generally getting in the way, but the way kids will.

When I tore the standing posts out of the ground, I was stunned by how little support there actually was: four cement coffee cans, no more than 18" deep, were all than anchored a rectangle frame two feet by six feet to the ground. I think my kids were in mortal danger every time they dangled from the trapeze bar.

Anyway, it's gone now. Omaha and I filled in the holes, and we've plotted out where the new set is gonna go. It's huge compared to the old one. But we'll figure something out. And I get to play handyman, with drills and saws and stuff, for the next week or so.