The Wrecking Ball Theory of Deconstruction

Jakob Nielsen says that the headline is the most important bit of blog writing, that it grabs readers -- or not. So, I have put considerable thought into what to call this.

I had thought a more 'blanket' title -- Theories of Deconstruction -- would be the best because that is, after all, what I intended to talk about. But then I recognized that if someone suggested that I read something called Theories of Deconstruction, I'd run in the other direction. But definitely something about deconstruction, because apparently (from the comments I got the other day) there are a lot of people interested in ripping their books apart.

So in the interests of thoroughness, if nothing else, I thought we'd take them one at a time. So, today, class, we are discussing the advantages of committing wholesale havoc.

On every book I do that here and there. Like taking out a room or a fireplace or something, I knock out a chapter or a scene. Whap, it's gone. Because, like as not, I gave it plenty of opportunity to prove itself worthy of inclusion, and it just swanned around being pretty in its own right, but not contributing anything to the book -- NO MATTER HOW MANY CHANCES I GAVE IT.

I can't tell you the number of scenes that has happened to. But I can tell you that every book but, I think, The Marriage Trap, had at least one. It may have, but the rest of the book just basically wrote itself, so I have such fond memories of that book that I never consider it an angst-producer.

And at the other end of the spectrum, there was A Cowboy's Promise. Every time I began to write that book, for which I had already written a synopsis of the story and which I knew -- and had known -- for over ten years because Charlie had been something of a teenage troublemaker in an earlier book, I stopped dead on page 31. Sometimes I stopped dead on page 29, but then, if I struggled, I could make it to 31. But I never got any further.

I wrote that damn first 31 pages for something like three months, looking for the key to get out of the Dew Drop Inn where Charlie was playing pool with a couple of locals, and into the rest of the story. And while I loved the scene with Charlie playing pool in the Dew Drop, I knew the whole book wasn't going to take place there. But I gave the book every chance. I gave the story every chance. Heck, I gave the heroine every chance. But she didn't do what she was supposed to do -- like show up. And Charlie couldn't play pool forever while we waited for her to get her act together.

So . . . eventually I went to the wrecking ball. One morning when I couldn't stand it anymore -- and the deadline was approaching and my editor was turning grey and my friends were totally tired of hearing me say, "Let me just run this past you one more time" -- I sat down at the computer, opened the file, highlighted all of chapter two that I had (because that's where it stopped) and hit delete. Then I took a deep breath, opened chapter one, and did the same thing.

Bye-bye book.

Hello, freedom.

It was drastic, yes, but it had to be. If I hadn't done it, the temptation to keep trying to fix it would have continued. It had to be totally gone. There could be no going back. And once I got rid of it and had the clean slate, I found a new story that was apparently the one Charlie and Cait were really waiting for me to discover and that one went very nicely. There were no glitches. There were the usual stumbling blocks and stutters, but no dead ends. No complete blank-outs. Nothing insurmountable.

I fear that if I hadn't done it, I'd be still here, six years later, writing Charlie in the Dew Drop for the 11 millionth time (and Cait would still be wherever she was, refusing to take part).

It was a little scary, yes. But it seemed like the best thing to do at the time. And in fact, now I wonder why I waited so long.

Spence is not a candidate for the wrecking ball. Yet. But I do not like the funny little echo I hear in the back of my brain which seems to be saying, "Give him time."