So, at the minute I'm deep into my biggest writing project in over a decade. It's called Polka, and it's about a pig who lives in a walled city and finds his small life magnified in ways he never wanted. At the same time as scribbling away at this novel, we are doing a lot of home improvement, and we've just turned the shit-tip of an outbuilding into a craft room. This has meant a lot of lifting and shifting of old stuff that hasn't been looked at in years. It's terrifying the amount of stuff you can gather over time. There was a street-ful of all kinds of mad things in that one building, including a spare sink, a selection of Easter bonnets, a disco ball, and something that once upon a time might well have been alive.
(Before we continue, can I say that obviously you haven't read this novel of mine that isn't anywhere near finished yet, but don't worry, this whole piece has a little point at the end, I promise. It wouldn't be like me to write something totally pointless.)
There was a box. In that box were some notepads. One of those notepads was this little feller:
This is volume 2 of my original 4 year old plan for Polka.
Modelled with my lovely Karen's fluid painting artwork.
I wrote about 120 (admittedly small) notepad pages of unusually (for me) detailed scene notes for Polka before I lost them. Some of these scenes are written as whole chapters, almost ready to drop straight into a book. There is no sign of the first notepad full of planning. The way things go round these parts, that may not be seen for another four years, and won't that make a nice prompt for another lovely blog post?
It has been somewhere between four and five years since I saw these pages. My heart hurtled into my throat. I almost didn't read it. After all this time, after writing 80,000 words of this novel, did I really want to look at this lost plan and discover that the route I was now carving through the story was inferior?
There are so many differences between what I had done then and what I'm writing now. It's like two people in completely separate places were given the same basic premise, the same opening scene and left to their own devices. In fact, that's exactly what happened.
There's a moral to all of this. Stick with it.
Character-wise, Polka (the main pig) is a bit more sure of himself. That's not a big deal, but in my current version, he's more introverted, not quite shy but definitely happiest when in his own world. This gives Polka a better arc, as against his wishes he is drawn out of this inner existence and into real life and it's challenges. A bigger change is in the character of his best friend, Nayt, who in the early version is a lot more brutish (hogish?) and ends up turning against Polka. Their relationship is far stronger and more nuanced in the new version, I'm pleased to say. There are characters in the old plan that aren't in the new write, and vice versa.
It's amazing to see how differently all the events in this later section of the book pan out. Without that first notepad of scene planning, I will never know quite how I got to the situations I scribbled out in notepad two. The only thing I know for definite about the lost notepad number one is that the first two scenes are exactly the same. There is a flashback to a young Polka being locked in the cellar by his particularly hardcore Grandfather Pig (known as Grandhog), and then the story picks up with Polka and Nayt heading to a public speech by the leader of the city. After this, the tracks diverge.
Beware: spoilers for a novel that doesn't exist.
The biggest difference by far, however, is in the matter of good and evil. The antagonists are very clearly bad from the outset, Polka doesn't seem to ever make a bad decision, the forces of good are unquestionable. In the version I'm writing now, everything's shaded in greyscale. Even the 'goodies' have done things they aren't proud of, or are prepared to do unpleasant deeds to get where they need to be, or it's simply difficult to tell which side they're on. There are those who would overthrow, but can we believe that they would do a better job?
I feel, in a way, like I've made contact with an earlier version of myself. Much has happened in real life between Then-me and Now-me. Then-me seems a little more idealistic than Now-me (although that too is shades of grey - I've always been something of a cynical bastard). I've long held the belief that the past is gone, it trundles away as soon as it's been seen, but I've stumbled upon myself from the year 2014, and although it's a bit of a one-way conversation, it's fascinating all the same.
So, what am I trying to say to you here? I want you to know that your work is incredibly rare (unless you are copying something someone else has sweated over and simply changing a word or two here or there - shame on you!). There is only you who could write exactly what you are writing in this moment. Even the you from four years ago, four months ago, four weeks ago, maybe even four days ago couldn't do what you are doing today.
Don't wonder whether you would write better in the future. There are other stories waiting for you there. This story you have is for the Here and Now.
Get on with it, and let us all see what you've got.
Laters.
