Overgrown Gardens and Shitty First Drafts

5/29/2017

The house we moved into in November once had stunning perennial gardens. After two seasons of neglect while the house was on the market, the flowering plants are so overgrown with weeds that it is hard to tell what’s there. It’s both a chore and an adventure to tear away the weeds, day after day, to discover the beauties underneath and allow them to flourish.

What else works this way? Cleaning out an old attic, perhaps. Ninety percent of what’s there can be thrown away, letting the delight of a forgotten childhood toy or an ancestor’s journal emerge from the dust.

While some writers refine and polish as they go, others of us generate a first draft that resembles an overgrown garden. Proposing “shitty first drafts” to avoid perfectionist paralysis, Anne Lamott wrote, “you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place.” Shaping or weeding is a separate, later series of tasks to expose the good stuff to sunlight. Tearing away the ungainly excess is both a chore and an adventure.

16 Comments

Lisa Imhoff

5/29/2017 11:03:58 am

Oh, Sarah, I'm experiencing this right now! I mean the writing part. My flower beds look pretty good...

About 20 years ago I wrote up a story about an ancestor's murder in Sweden. Thought it was decent and distributed it to rellies. Which was a good thing, to share the information. Due to a series of coincidences, I've just revisited it and hate it, HATE it, so I'm rewriting it right now.

I shared my first draft of the rewrite with a few friends, one who is neither a gardener or writer, but she is a reader. She pointed out a jarring sentence which was akin to a tropical jungle plant living in a native Wisconsin landscape. It did not fit.

In arranging information for another part of the story, I happened to climb into the attic of my research and found some cool stuff in an opposite corner. When I pulled it out and put them side by side, the lights came on and illuminated the obvious solution to that out-of-place tropical plant. Compost it! (Maybe even burn it. It's that bad. It turns out it is the one paragraph that made me hate the whole thing and the rest really wasn't bad at all.)

I once read about gardening that moving something even six inches can make a tremendous impact on whether it "works" or not. I think writing is the same. That of course comes after the composting.

A mutual friend of ours, who is having a book published right now, wrote to me this morning, "Sometimes it does seem to take a while for the pieces to click together, but when they finally do, the "aha!" is stronger."

Of the creative process in general: When I design a piece of literature which has lots of elements, sometimes I just have to put them all on the digital page (bare ground), and then start to move them around and decide which ones I'm going to give room, and which ones need to be composted. But those elements generally comes to me all at once and little if any is in the attic. With established flower beds (story, facts), we don't have that luxury.

Sarah link

5/29/2017 05:57:17 pm

Lisa, love your description with the out-of-place tropical jungle plant and the research attic! I have sometimes been quite embarrassed by pieces I wrote long ago and thought were pretty good at the time. Occasionally it's the other way around; I'm startled by how well something old worked and don't know that I could do as well now. It sounds like your ancestral murder story was better than you recently thought, if one jarring sentence or paragraph largely took care of the awfulness.

When I was drafting this morning's post, I wondered how well the overgrown, let-it-romp first draft fits the visual arts. I wasn't thinking of moving parts around electronically so much as ink drawing, painting, or sculpture. Seems like revision might be harder than in writing and there might be more need to get it right the first time.

So what happens with the elements you compost, rather than burn? Do the composted elements provide the soil for new text or design on down the road?

5/29/2017 07:47:21 pm

Well, Sarah, I AM doing some judicious pruning to let in some light to illuminate some points that were spindly before, and adding some annuals, little gnomes and birdbaths to my story.

My rellies were thrilled and some of them still have the original, they tell me. If we had not written the first stories and then revisited them for one reason or another, how would we be able to recognize our growth? I enjoy looking at pics of my flower beds 7-8 years ago... My rellies are also more mature now and this more developed story, which will NOT have the word "unfathomable" anywhere, will help them understand more, better. Because my readers have evolved and matured. And I am always conscious of my reader. In design, as well as sharing genealogy.

Chuckle. You were the one who first mentioned flowers and attics. I merely built on your theme. Careful reader that I am. In other words, you are doing a good job.

Yes, I used the compost vs burn metaphor because I think it does fit very well. As you suggest, compost is what happens to the stuff which we want to build upon, to provide an improved base for what we want to grow. It provides aeration and loosens hard spots, and adds fertility to the sandy spots, which then can retain water and nutrients. But, compost comes from something we already have on hand. Sometimes material from the garden itself. Sometimes from dinner leftovers, sometimes somewhere else, such as, dare I say, chicken shit?

We burn the stuff that just has to go away and not ever be seen again in the same form.

But, according to articles I've read in Mother Earth News, even a small amount of ashes can benefit the soil.

So, see, those first embarrassing attempts were not for naught.

Back to the visual arts, like my work for hire. Do you mean digital revision of something like a piece of marketing literature, which also contains graphics, is harder than revising writing, or a pen and ink drawing? It's natural for me. For my client work, I need the graphics to keep me focused on the intent. For my personal writing, I spring from the graphics to deepen my point. See, he couldn't write his name here, he signed an X, at age 44. But when he signed here, 20 years later, he signed his name! But look how hard it was. It's shaky and tight and cramped. But he signed the naturalization paper himself. Who taught him to write? He was not an ignorant wretched peasant immigrant. Sweden had compulsory education. He could read. But WRITING wasn't a necessary skill in Sweden in 1850, and it wasn't taught in school. Now, won't it be more impactful to show a portion of those two documents? It will make the reader stop and ponder.

Or in the case of the murder, to show the page in the church death book telling that my g-g-g-grandfather died because he was hit in the head with a sharp stone near the crossroads below Bockara, when everyone else on the page died of pneumonia or some other mundane event? And to show a map, and show how close he was to home?

I need the graphics like I need my salvia, dianthus and lady's mantle, to unify and to provide texture. But I move both about freely so they can do their job the best. Sometimes I just flat out need to expand a bed, too... Which is soooooo much easier to do digitally! Ask my knee! And sometimes, six inches will solve a problem. And, some things have deep roots and don't transplant well. And some things have poison in their roots and nothing can grow near them. Cocklebur and walnuts come to mind. And, "unfathomable"...

5/29/2017 08:39:32 pm

Unfathomable! The word must have a use or it wouldn't have been invented. Its use is, of course, unfathomable. I will never again hear it without thinking of you with a grin.

How curious that compulsory education didn't include teaching writing, only reading. Unfathomable. Yes, I would definitely like the graphics to illustrate the point about the signature. And maps, oh, yes, please. I'll joyfully take a map to illustrate almost anything. Maps, floor plans, aerial photographs . . . Which is drifting from the point. Unfathomable.

5/30/2017 09:29:05 am

In those simple times, most Swedes didn't need to know how to write. What would they write? To-do lists? A journal??? If they needed to send a letter, they might have the priest write it, or a soldier. Some classes could write.

But they did have to study the scriptures. So, if a genealogist didn't know that about the education system, she'd think her ancestor was ignorant and had a pathetic, deprived existence and it's a GOOD THING he came here. When that would not be true at all. About the deprived existence I mean.

It's an example that doing just a TAD more research on a different time and place can make our writing more accurate and interesting, and, for readers, add depth and understanding about our character and setting. Which I know you are also thinking about in your writing.

And that fact happens to be something I discovered in a different trunk in the attic: that my Swedish SOLDIER ancestor, of the same generation and living 15 miles away, had to be able to write his own name to be accepted as a soldier. Suddenly I understood something that I'd described in an inconclusive and spindly way by coming across the well-developed fact noted about another person. Divided the fact among the two pages and characters, and now the characters BOTH glow, for different reasons.

5/30/2017 12:01:33 pm

So the purpose of education was to read the Bible, which was probably true in many places in past centuries. I wonder if reading was taught more in Protestant than Catholic countries for that reason. Your Tale of Two Ancestors is also an object lesson in judging past individuals and cultures by the standards of today. There's so much more stimulation and growth (as well as accuracy) in stretching ourselves into minds and lives with different core assumptions..

Lisa

5/30/2017 12:44:33 pm

With a nod to you (and Charles Dickens) I may steal that title. :)

Also, in Sweden for a few hundred years, the Swedish Lutheran church WAS the state, largely, with the church keeping all vital records and more. They did have government as we know it too, which, for one thing, tried the two young men who killed Nils Samuelsson with the stone as well as administered the estates of the deceased.

The Swedes actually were tested once a year on their knowledge of the Bible. Not that they went to jail or anything for flunking, but it was part of their belonging to the church.

It's hard to do that stretching, tho, isn't it? We can always tell at book discussion if the writer really had a deep understanding of what they wrote about. And, we resent being lectured to, so I want to try to maintain a non-condescending or non-lecturing voice.

Even my esteemed writer friends may not point out to me where I sound like a textbook, so I'll need to ask them directly.

Thanks for this conversation.

What is the religion of the people you are writing about right now?

5/30/2017 05:09:26 pm

In my current novel (set in 1480, pre-Luther), the protagonist and other foreigners on Rhodes and the Knights of Saint John who rule it are all Roman Catholic, the native islanders (a couple of whom become close friends of the protagonist) are all Greek Orthodox, and the Knights are at war with the Ottoman Turks, who are Muslim. Oh, and one important character and her husband and neighbors are Jews. It is a fun mix to work with.

I trust it was the government of Sweden, and not the two young men, who administered the estate of the deceased.

5/30/2017 05:17:23 pm

Good grief. How do you research THOSE relationships?

I've asked a friend if her husband was a Lutheran minister. He was a minister. I think Lutheran. If he was Lutheran, I'm going to ask him to describe to me how he would counsel a couple who had just lost their first and then their second daughters to childhood disease. Leaving them childless each time.

I hope he doesn't use the word unfathomable. Cuz I just got RID of it in that context.

5/30/2017 07:43:26 pm

I hope he doesn't say God has a plan and a purpose for everything that happens, even if that purpose is beyond our limited comprehension. But that is judging by my beliefs and standards, and hits the limits of my ability (or willingness to try) to get inside someone else's head.

5/31/2017 09:38:06 am

I read back this whole thread to make sure I haven't already mentioned that in collecting Swedish church records this winter, I found another couple who had two children die in close proximity, within a year. If a person moves to another house or farm, there's a column in the church records noting that, and the new residence (could be the name of a house or farm, a different parish, or a different country — flyttad til Americka, or flew to America) and the date. A new location was noted for these two small children, which isn't noted that way when there's a death, there's a separate column for that — dödd, or died — but I didn't recognize the location. I thought oh my, were the children taken away for some reason? Couldn't the parents care for them, or what? So google translate to the rescue, and the children had moved to everlasting heaven. (Insert silent gasp here.)

So you see, the children's deaths and the parent's grief might not have been unfathomable after all. Their deep and simple faith provided a comfort that few of us can understand, I posit.

It's not exactly that God has a plan. I think that verges on intellectualizing the emotions. (Remember I'm a UU from the '70s, too.) They recognized death as part of life much more than their descendants do today (in Americka at least). Nils and Maria certainly felt the loss, the emptiness and quiet of the house, the abrupt change in daily activities, as any parent today. They perhaps briefly railed and questioned their faith.

But 99% of Swedes were Lutheran, so there wasn't anyone else who might have confused them with a different viewpoint or encouraged their confusion or anger. The conclusion would be unanimous — the children were merely in a different place.

Thank you for helping me puzzle through how to present this to both my friend to help me understand the Lutheran view of death and the afterlife, and to explain it in my writing so it will give the rellies pause for thought about how they may empathize or not with these folks.

I guess this illustrates a difference in what you are doing vs what I am doing in our writing. I'm dealing with real people, MY people, and I want to respect that. If I didn't have a few of their genes, it could be a very different story. And yet we are both trying to manipulate our reader to elicit some response.

Thanks for this thread and helping me think about this via your short but leading replies.

5/31/2017 10:26:51 am

How fascinating that your ancestors recorded the children's deaths as having moved, rather than died. And at the same time, that cannot have been standard practice, or there wouldn't have been a separate column for deaths. Did this family view death differently? Or was there just a meaningless slip, inadvertently recording the death in the wrong column? Is there any way to tell?

Of course, I too try to get into the heads of my characters with respect and sympathy for how they would have seen things. I was merely spouting off about a personal pet peeve about things people sometimes tell the bereaved in an attempt to console. I have no problem with the bereaved finding comfort where they can. Writing historical fiction does offer the luxury of giving the protagonist the attitudes I most understand or admire, within the range likely to have existed in that time and place. This is pretty common in the historical fiction I read.

5/31/2017 11:14:42 am

Sarah, RE: your second para, understand and agree.

RE: Moved vs. died. The record was made by the minister, and some day I'll go back and check whether he noted that for other children's deaths in other families as well (by looking at other families and examining handwriting in a similar range of time). I'm sure it's not an anomaly or mistake. They recorded a lot of deaths (and births and marriages) and the register books were printed by the church and standard for each range of years, but I haven't seen it in other records for my direct line (and I don't look closely at other families). So not all ministers did it. He felt some additional reason to put that fact in writing for all eternity to know. And my gasp was audible when I read that.

I feel comfortable in taking the liberty of expanding that to be their general belief (will still talk to my minister friend) because they really were a homogenous society in terms of religion.

IMHO, Lutherans are about as close to being Catholic as you can get without being Catholic. Catholics believe you die and go to a "better place" (if you don't go to a worse one)... My step-grandmother was a strong Lutheran of the German flavor, and she told me that in heaven the streets were paved with gold. And she *absolutely* believed that.

But I'm not going to bring her into this. And she's long gone so I can't question her about it.

I learned at a seminar on Swedish genealogy research at WHS last fall that there are people who aren't even Swedish who study Swedish church records, because they are so fascinating. All it would take is one little nugget like that to be hooked.

5/31/2017 11:23:05 am

At least I only have one culture to understand, and it's not TOO far removed from anything familiar. Keeping track of Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Muslims and Jews ... wow. Did they understand and relate to each other better then than today? How in the heck did you choose that?

5/31/2017 03:55:50 pm

The Christians were fighting the (Muslim) Ottoman Turks. The Jewish couple had fled Spain in the period leading up to the Spanish Inquisition. In Rhodes, the Catholics from western Europe were the occupying power and the Orthodox were the occupied. The period 1400-1700 always fascinated me, in part because of its religious complexity. (Also plague, floods, fires, heresies, and other narrative treats. See my blog post from March 21, 2016, "Fire, Flood, and Famine.")

6/1/2017 08:20:22 am

Your story would probably be of genetic interest to me. NG reported I have 6% of my genes in common with people from Turkey, Syria...possibly from about that time frame.

Overgrown Gardens and Shitty First Drafts

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