Why Rewrites are Bad News

So, the MaMotR rewrite steamrollers along at close to 50 pages now (and Boromir hasn't even left Gondor yet, which is a good sign for the narrative pace, I think.) I had a discussion with my sister about whether a rewrite was against FF.net rules, and we agreed as long as it gets a new title, I should be okay. I've decided on "A Rose Among the Briars", a twist on a line from the Christina Rossetti poem "The Rose":

The lily has a smooth stalk,

Will never hurt your hand;

But the rose upon her brier

Is lady of the land.

But something about this story is really starting to worry me. I actually had a discussion with myself the other day that went a little something like this:

Muse: You had Rhoswen get a dog for New Year's in the original. You still want to go through with that? I think getting a hawk would be so much cooler.

Me: A hawk would be cool. But the dog would have to be a hunting dog, and I think the original had greyhounds, which I still think would be appropriate.

Muse: But dogs and hawks are symbols of the hunt, and I don't think they're big on the hunting scene in the Tower of Guard. I mean, you've already established that the Pelannor Fields are townlands.

Me: Damn, you're right. They wouldn't have time for stuff like that in Gondor. Hunting is a replacement for fighting, and they fight all the time. Nix on that. Still want Rhoswen to get a hawk, though. Maybe it could just be an elite status symbol, a throwback to a time when they did have the time.

Muse: Now, wait. She's good with small children and gardening. And she sings later. You can't have her be good with animals too!

Me: Damn, hadn't thought of that either. Gonna have to think of something else for a present.

Yes, I had this conversation! I am so afraid New!Rhoswen is turning into a Sue after reading Why Bella is a Mary Sue by whitedog1 on DeviantArt. The MarySue Litmus test gives me a 20, which still isn't very reassuring, but I checked some canon character boxes that only get checked because I took her dad's name from the list of lords that ride into Minas Tirith before the Battle for the Pelannor Fields.

And on top of all that, I guess I'm afraid no one's going to want to read it. All in all, not good prognosis here.

Five Years Time

Oh
Five years time
I might not know you
Five years time
We might not speak
Oh
In five years time
We might not get along
In five years time
You might just prove me wrong

-- Five Years Time, Noah and The Whale (Here at YOUTUBE)


Today I started my re-write of Meaning and Mystery of the Rose, and I use the word re-write exactly the way it means. I tried to remember the original plot line and started over with a clean slate. Glanced at the original copy after I'd written about ten pages, but that was it. And boy, was I glad. I couldn't even bring myself to re-use anything in the original. It was just...terrible.

But then I glanced at the date I published it. October of 2004. Nearly FIVE YEARS AGO. And this taught me something. In five years, I have learned something about writing. I have improved. And that made me feel really good.

I wrote the exact same scene two different ways, and I have to say, the second version reads in a much more fluent fashion. The original first chapter of MaMotR (Ha, I just realized that rhymes with LotR; are my acronyms good or what?) was so busy, so hectic. I changed scenes about six different times in four pages. Obviously I wanted to get to the good stuff. In this new draft, we spend at least a page with each character before moving somewhere else. Also the transistions between those scenes are a little more fluid.

You can read the old copy here. I'm trying to figure out some place to archive the new text so you can compare it with the old one and laugh along with me at how gung-ho I was about my writing at the age of fifteen.

Editing -- An elephant, only with more punctuation.

Editing. Everyone hates to do it, but it's the elephant-in-the-room of the writing world -- something that cannot be ignored despite the fact that everyone wants to.

And I'm not talking about the cross your Ts and dot your Is editing, either. I'm talking about the redirect the last forty pages of your story editing, which I am getting a crash course in this week as I try to do that in addition to juggling a host of other things, not the least of which is beginning my prep work for my study abroad experience this fall. (Galway, Ireland? Anyone? Anyone?)

Was it necessary for me to abruptly decide to uproot the ending and take it in a completely different direction? No. But one of my reviewers suggested it, and after much thoughtful consideration, I decided that her suggestion had a lot of merit, and it would pose new and interesting challenges for me as well as a different (and more thought-provoking) message for the reader.

Last Friday I posted the first chapter in this new and revised ending sequence, and it felt a bit like pushing the button to initiate a countdown sequence on a bomb. A very large, imposing, life-in-the-world-as-we-know-it-altering kind of bomb. Well, now it's several days later, and I still don't feel any better about it, mainly because of the three people who I can generally count on to review only one has actually gone and done it.

But I'm still having fun researching and adding new elements to my story, one of which I am shamelessly borrowing from the Arabian Nights -- the character of Scheherazade, the great storyteller who sets the fantastic and elaborate tales of the one thousand and one nights in motion. I'm not actually putting her in the story, per se, but instead I'm borrowing the concept of so skilled a storyteller and applying her to my main character, herself something of a storyteller. Her new love interest refers to her by this long and strange name, and Aude asks her tutor where the name comes from. The tutor explains the story of Scheherazade and Sharyar, and Audemande realizes what a great compliment this is coming from her love interest.

As I was sitting in the library reading The Arabian Nights and Orientalism: Perspectives from East and West in between my math class and Shakespeare, I realized something very interesting about Song of a Peacebringer in relationship to the Arabian Nights. The Nights are well known for their use of a frame story (Scheherazade having to tell stories in order to be spared execution) and for their subsequent deepening levels of narrative within the narrative -- Much like Hamlet's 'play-within-a-play' plot device, some of Scheherazade's stories have in themselves more people telling stories, embedding a story within a story within a story.

Song of a Peacebringer, then has an 'intertext' or 'narrative quilt' five layers deep, something I certainly didn't plan on but was kind of pleased to discover. Let me explain:

First there's
ME, Mercury Gray, the author, telling a story about
AUDEMANDE, who is in turn listening to a story about
SCHEHERAZADE, who is telling Sharyar a story about
A PRINCESS IN A FAR AWAY LAND who is telling a story to her children about
AN ENCHANTED CASTLE.

and Voila! Intertext five layers thick. Needless to say this discovery made me feel very talented this morning.