Layers

One reason I write slowly is that I tend to write in layers.

The initial layer is sort of like when actors gather the first time on stage to read their lines and figure out the choreography. The delivery is stiff and clunky and without much emotion, and a lot of experimentation is involved in deciding how to move and which way to face and what to do with their hands. The set is not yet built, so they have to imagine where the furniture is, or else crates and boxes are used as stand-ins.

Now sometimes I'll get lucky; the scene will flow right from the beginning and I can strip away the surface to uncover the deeper layers without all that fumbling and awkwardness.

Unfortunately, it doesn't always work that way (particularly when I haven't been writing enough and I'm rusty), so I dutifully plop dialogue on the page and move the characters around like little stick puppets and create a basic set with lackluster props...and wonder where I ever got the idea I could write.

Then I have to start peeling the layers away. I do that by reading and revising the scene, or any portion of it if the whole thing isn't written yet, over and over and over...and each time I sharpen and rearrange and re-imagine it until something fresh and interesting begins to emerge. I suppose (to briefly switch analogies) it's like excavating dinosaur bones. Eventually, with patience and persistence, the scene emerges, cohesive and articulate, with a pleasing shape and all the vertebrae in the right place.

Occasionally it bears little resemblance to what I started with. Details pop up, colorful and sometimes startling. Secrets are revealed. The characters begin to live their lines instead of just reading them. I love it when I reach that point. It's one of the most rewarding parts of writing.

But it takes time and effort to get there. If I were more talented, or maybe if my brain were wired differently, I could probably achieve that level of writing with only a draft or two.

Alas, I am not so gifted. I have to work at it. Really work. What is it they always say? That success is 2 percent inspiration and 98 percent perspiration?

Yeah.

* * *

One morning after the season's first snow had shrunk to dirty white patches, Jona made her way stealthily to the deserted little yard at the back of Wildkeep, where the outer walls were tumbling down and the mud was slick and cold. She had hidden her stone picture in one corner where a jutting wall and a sheaf of overhanging boughs made a sheltered little alcove. The branches protected it from most of the snow and rain. No one ever bothered her here, not even Selki.

She scrambled up the jagged stone blocks of the sheltering wall and pushed the green-needled branches aside to let the light in. From up here, it was easier to see the patterns and soft shadings of color of all the small stones that made a picture of a woman.

Black fragments—actually bits of charcoal Jona had dug out of the ashes of an unused hearth—formed the woman's hair, draping in dark trails over her shoulder. Her face and hands were made of pale smooth stones fished out of the creek below the castle, and a pair of turquoise ovals Jona had removed from a concubine's necklace had become the eyes. The rest of her body was a blur of mismatched pebbles and tiles, but Jona thought the woman was supposed to be standing in front of a door and holding something in her hands. The picture wouldn't be finished until Jona found the right stones, so she kept trying different ones. That was how she'd made the picture, by listening to the stones when she placed them in patterns. The right stones whispered to each other. She decided they must be telling a story, though she wasn't sure what the story was about or how it would end. But she had discovered that when she laid the whispering stones into patterns, those patterns eventually became a picture. The story they told was not one for listening to, but one that could be seen with the eyes.

Every day she prowled the keep's tunnels and yards and even the nearby forest, whenever she could sneak out, to scrounge more pebbles to keep the story going. When she could, she pried them from the walls themselves, where bits of old pictures still remained. Nobody paid her much mind; folks came and went from the keep every day. Not even in the Lur had she seen so many people crowded into one place: an army of rough-spoken, stinking men, hung about with swords and knives and clubs; lots of women, to cook and be concubines and mothers; and scads of children scampering about in little packs, like dogs. They shunned her for reasons she didn't understand. Mostly she didn't care. She had her stones to play with, and when she was lonely, there was always Mama, when she wasn't sleeping, and Kal, who was kind, bringing her clothes to wear and tidbits from the kitchens. Sometimes Harb told her stories, though she didn't always understand them.

She didn't understand the story she was making with stones, either. All she knew was that the woman in the picture was about to do something dangerous. And she didn't like her very much, though she didn't know why. It was just a feeling she had, that the woman had taken something from her, something that mattered a great deal.

Or maybe she hadn't taken it yet, but she would.

Even though Jona had no idea who the woman was.

(from The Knife-Giver, ch. 61 "Unfinished Stories")