First Draft

by Judith Lindbergh

Writing is like hiking. You put on your backpack filled with all the necessities – in this case, an idea, maybe some research, an outline – like an indispensable topographical map with landmarks already circled. You’ve got water and food. The trail is clearly marked. You know where you’re going. You can see the summit from the parking lot. But the long slog up that first mountain hasn’t revealed itself to you yet.

A first draft is like that. You’re marveling at the scenery, the gorgeous flowering bushes, the rich stand of gently wafting ferns. There’s a pleasant trickle from the creek that you cross on a rickety wooden bridge. You think yourself brilliant, dashing off that first cool flow of long meditated sentences. You’ve been planning them for months, perhaps years. They sparkle with the refreshing glitter of sunlight filtering through a towering canopy of trees.

Finally you leave the tranquil shelter of beginning and start your true assent. No one told you about that cliff you’d have to scramble, or the cloud of biting black flies, the pitfalls, dead-ends and double-backs where you’d thought you’d known where your plot was going, only to realize suddenly that the path is utterly hazardous, perhaps even impassible.

You trudge on. Those first promising pages now recede into the distance. Your draft, like the path, is no longer firmly tramped down. Your pack feels heavier. Your t-shirt’s sticking to your back. Yet you’ve found an even, regular pace. Each step is another sentence, a paragraph slowly building, climbing, one upon the last. You sense some progress, a new, comfortable familiarity with your characters, your story, maybe your voice.

You notice hidden offshoots, subplots to the right and left. You try them, and occasionally they turn in the wrong direction – just deer paths that dwindle into nowhere. Other times, the shortcut draws you to a beautiful vision of the climax you’ve planned, a shimmering vista glimpsed through dense trees.

You rest the night beneath an epic sky. Your dreams are sparks of starlit brilliance scribbled illegibly on a bedside pad. You keep a pen and flashlight close at hand.

You start out fresh again each morning bright and early – or for some writers, dark and late. You’re feeling happier now, more confident in your abilities as you stride across a level grade, leaping occasionally onto flat stones that glisten with treasure. You get on your knees, take out your pick-shovel and begin to dig. It takes hours to free the shiny spark of inspiration. Then you study the precious nugget – a worthless scene. Pyrite. Fool’s gold.

There’s a rocky trail ahead, then a big tree that fell in hard rain. You go over it, around it, but the path you thought well blazed ages ago has lost its markings. You try another path, another. Again and again. That topographical map wasn’t very clear at all. It was barely a sketch with only some of the trail penciled in, smudged in places, and most of the landmarks completely misplaced. You crumple the worthless paper up and throw it into the wastebasket. The climax is miles off. You hadn’t realized this mountain was so high.

If the air’s not getting thin, it will. You question your resolve. You think you should turn back – give up – but instead you sit on a rock for a while and whittle a stick with your pocket knife (doodle on a steno pad, make another outline, take some notes). Your legs are aching. You’re sweaty and you stink. You get up and keep on going.

Suddenly you realize you’re absolutely famished. You reach into your pack – Where are those good ole’ raisins and peanuts? You take another break. It refreshes and clears your head, but you’re no further along than you were. Perhaps more research. You lift up your binoculars. Hey, a vermillion flycatcher! I’ve never seen one in these parts before. But you know these are just distractions. You drop the glasses, letting them dangle around your neck. You ramble on.

Finally you sense the dense forest brightening. You look ahead, and instead of seeing only stone and earth and bugs and brush, you discover a horizon punctuated by a pleasant grove. Between the tree-trunks, thick grass grows that has never been mown. A doe grazes peacefully beside its fawn. Everything’s exactly as you’d pictured it. You step cautiously, knowing now you are almost at the top. The summit. The climax. It’s right there before you. Just a few more pages. Maybe one more scene. The excitement you’d imagined so many paragraphs before is finally within reach. You charge across the last footsteps, typing furiously, barely breathing toward “The End.”

It’s done. You hold your manuscript in your hands. Indeed, a manuscript, no longer a pile of meaningless toner and tree pulp. You set the pages down neatly on your desk. It’s a fine outcropping with a brilliant view – so far above so many distant fields and houses. The wind’s soft in your hair and you know you’ve accomplished something real.

You slip off your heavy pack, take a deep drink from your canteen. Sweeter than you’d expected. You chew and swallow one of those rubbery brown concoctions someone thought to call an energy bar. You breathe in the air, rich for its thinness. Maybe take a nap for an hour or two, soaking in the heat of the sun radiating from the hard won granite.

When you awaken the sun is half cocked. You sigh, pick up your pages, bound now with a thick, extra long rubber band. You fan them with your thumb, weigh them heavy in your palms. You are pensive, wistful, not quite ready to face what’s next. The long slog back down the mountain contains just as many pitfalls, just as many traps.

The second draft.

(Copyright 2009 by Judith Lindbergh. All rights reserved.)