I put up a post recently on the Swords & Sixguns Facebook page that contained a quote from actor/composer Paul Williams, wherein he said, "Be careful about throwing something in the round file as garbage" because what you view as a failure might lead to something spectacular down the line. I admitted in my repost that I had thrown out tons of stuff over the years, though I try to do so less often these days. I have a box in my office labeled as an "archive" that contains various drafts of the book, along with flyers and convention lanyards and such. I also keep on my desk the original black looseleaf binder that held all of my work from the moment I first sat down to write my novel exactly 30 years ago today. It still holds drawings and notes and other little things going all the way back to those early days. I could put it in the box, but it sat on my desk for so long, it doesn't seem right to tuck it away.
This sentimentality is a huge change from how I treated my work 30+ years ago. I have no idea how many pieces of paper I ripped up and tossed way back then, but it was a lot. Not just writing, mind you, but art pieces as well. I would get into "I suck so bad" moods and just chuck things that I hated at that moment. This is why I tell people that the 400-page first draft that I wrote longhand was my "final" first draft: all the drafts before it were never finished, they'd just get destroyed or cannibalized for the next iteration that would also get destroyed and cannibalized for the iteration after that, and so on and so on. If my husband hadn't challenged me to "Just keep writing" and crank out 100 pages before the year 2000, I'd likely still be in that same destructive cycle here in 2024.
But there are bits of those earliest drafts that remain intact in the black binder I mentioned. Things that never made it into the published version, yet can't be inserted into a hypothetical "expanded edition" because there's no place to plug them in. So, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of me taking a week off of my paying job to start writing this crazy idea I had in my head, here's eight pages written by early-20s me, with commentary by 50-year-old me interspersed.
The first thing that likely jumps out for you folks is J'nath saying "you" instead of "thou". I don't recall when I began having him and Pietruvek talk with "all them 'thees' and 'thous' and shit" (as Richard would put it in published version of Chapter 5), but it's not present at all in these pages, so it obviously didn't surface for a while. You'll also notice a line at the bottom of the page that not only says that there are nine countries in Arkhein -- as opposed to the "Seven Known Lands" H'landa refers to a couple of chapters later -- but the Kana-Semeth are referred to simply as Guardsmen, a holdover from the very first version of Arkhein
which I discussed in a post about 10 years ago. However, a variation on the middle section did make it into the published version, as did the "dine-of-might" gag (changed to "die-of-might" and uttered instead by H'landa near the climax of the book).
A few different things here: J'nath hasn't seen what a gun can do yet (the slip-up in the snow didn't exist in the earliest drafts), there's talk of a war about 65 years prior (a throwaway line, no real intent behind it), and Nina's eyes are described as hazel instead of "too blue" (Richard's words for the vibrant blue eyes many Arkans have). You may also notice that, while Nina is present for the gun demonstration, Pietruvek is not. In the earliest drafts, the youngest Bannen had been sent to the capital city to collect the only known remaining piece of the Heart of Avisar (that wasn't embedded in a Crossroad, that is). While I never got far enough in the earliest drafts to write the scene, Pietruvek's return would've brought with him Lieutenant (not Lermekt) H'landa as well as news that the aforementioned piece of the Heart hadn't survived the centuries, officially stranding Richard in Arkhein.
Stuff like this is why I kept these pages instead of tossing them away like I did the 45 pages the preceded it. I was happy with the staging of the scene and the descriptions I'd made, but it didn't fit well with what became the final first draft. Richard here is fairly relaxed, he's making jokes, and most importantly, he thinks he's going to be able to leave Arkhein. The attitude he has in the published version of Chapter 5 doesn't match how he acts here, so it had to be put aside. Luckily, as you've seen already and will continue to see, I was able to utilize parts of these pages later on in different ways...
...like the majority of this page, for example. This exchange was repurposed nearly word-for-word in Chapter 9, with H'landa speaking J'nath's lines as he makes ready to release Richard from jail. Speaking of which, you'll notice at the bottom of the page that J'nath refers to him by his proper name, not "Reshard"! That gag didn't start up until I began working on the Arkan language in earnest -- it's barely present in these pages aside from a couple of words -- and decided that there was no letter C in Arkan, which meant I'd either have to invent a symbol to represent the "ch" sound in Richard's name or just have everybody mispronounce it. The latter was funnier, so I went with it.
Pretty much from the beginning, I'd decided on there being a language barrier between Richard and nearly everyone in Arkhein, but since I had barely started work on the Arkan language yet, Nina has zero lines in these pages. Rereading them now, it looks awful that I have her in these scenes saying literally nothing -- the closest I have is Richard's narrative comment about her and J'nath "talking about something". In my author talks, I tell new writers that they need to avoid the "sexy lamp", which is a woman who's just there, not contributing anything to the plot/conversation...and I see now that my earliest draft was super-guilty of doing that to Nina throughout.
More shitty writing towards Nina. Insulting her cooking, making a semi-lewd comment that she can't understand but her husband definitely can...gah, this is awful! And yeah, Richard still hasn't properly met the doc yet. While I don't remember exactly I wrote in the previous chapters of the earliest drafts, I do recall rushing through scenes a lot, and that they were much shorter than what you see in the published version. Richard's shock over waking up in Arkhein was a rather quick thing, no real disbelief or arguing. I hadn't yet learned that conflict is a good thing in a story, nor did I understand how to let a scene breathe, so to speak, and just let the characters do their thing.
While the Feast of Halitova did exist in the earliest drafts, it wouldn't have been the first time Richard went to town. Again, I was rushing, which in this case meant I wasn't thinking about story structure. What's the big deal about Richard being at the party if everyone has seen him already? So in the published version, he's more-or-less confined to the Bannen household until Halitova, with only a couple of people seeing him beforehand. It gives him time to acclimate and learn some of the language, not to mention heal up from all the wounds I'd inflicted on him.
Our last page, and our last repurposed scene. You'll recognize the gist of it from the end of Chapter 9, but the impetus and attitude is totally different. In the earliest draft here, Richard just gives up his guns to put J'nath at ease...and looking back at it, this doesn't really fit with who he is at this point in the story. It's the first sign that he can change his outlaw ways, but it's not earned yet, it just happens. In the published version, this happens after he's screwed up multiple times and been tossed in jail by
Lermekt H'landa for a while, leading up to him realizing that he's going to ruin this new life as badly as the old one if he doesn't get his shit together.
Now the change is earned,
now voluntarily giving up his guns means something, and I'm much happier with how it plays out.
I don't recall exactly what I'd written after these pages, but knowing how awful I usually felt about my work just days or weeks after writing it, I likely didn't get much further before the tearing of pages began. There are other bits of scenes I still have tucked away in that binder, so if you like what you read here, let me know and maybe I'll do another stroll down memory lane around this time next year.
