In which revising a novel is like going to Australia in 2018 when you left Australia in 1998
When I was 12, my dad had a teaching exchange to Noosa, Australia, and my mum, my younger brother and I all went with him. We lived there for a year. Dad worked, Ian and I did school, and mum was bored for four weeks until she started driving dad to campus instead of being carless on the top of a mountain, and was finally able to start meeting people. Grandma had cashed our savings bonds for travel, so Ian and I had our own money. At school, I could be whoever I wanted because it was just one year. Australia was, in a lot of ways, the first time I was free and happy simultaneously in my entire life.
I love drafting. I love it. I love the rush. I love the words pouring out of me. I love not knowing for sure what’s going to happen (I’m a pantser), and just disconnecting conscious thought (more or less) and waiting for the story to appear. I tend to think about books for months, storing them in my brain, and then typing them up at a rate of 10,000 words a day. My personal best is start to 67K in six days. My highest word count in twenty-four hours in 28K (the last day I was drafting The Afterward). I realize that I am describing a lot of people’s worst nightmares, but so help me, it works.
There are approximately ten billion things that can kill you in Australia, but I think what puts most people off is the flight. The first time I did it, it was Toronto-Honolulu-Fiji-Auckland-Brisbane, with the same plane all the way to Auckland. The screen on our particular plane was broken, and would only play That Thing You Do—they play that song about a hundred times in that movie, did you know that? Just thinking about it makes me nauseated—and we changed form -30* and a blizzard in Toronto to +30* and ice cream at 6am in Fiji. Now you can do it with just one stop, which is incredible, and since you leave North American they even feed you, but I still recommend bringing your own snacks.
I tend to approach flying the way I approach my edit letter: denial. I’m really, really grateful not to have travel anxiety. I can get on a plane with very little worry (mostly because if something DOES happen, I’ll be dead and therefore won’t care), and that’s very useful given my career and love of places that are not Southwestern Ontario. Maybe what I’m actually feeling is acceptance. It’s out of my hands, and I’m just going to roll with it. Edit letters are kind of in the same vein for me, emotionally. I’ve bought the ticket and now I have to deal with it. You feel wedged into a too-small space. At some point, you can no longer get out. The people in the front are better off. The stuff you left in the overhead is what you need and the stuff in your lap is useless. The seatbelt sign is on and you desperately need to pee. So, I guess, a bit of acceptance. But mostly denial. Denial that any of it can stop me. Denial that anything cataclysmic will befall me.
The two things that prevented me from traveling were my spine and my bank account. My parents have been back to Australia about once every two years. My younger brother and his wife went back a few years ago. My sister and her family a few years before that. But I never could. And the longer I waited, the more I worried: what if it isn’t home anymore? What if it’s just a place I’ve been?
I’ve been fortunate to work with editors who get me (or who pretend to get me until I have adequately explained myself), so I don’t usually have surprises in my edit letter. The one time I’ve had to remove a character, for example, there was a note from me in the draft that said “I know I have to remove this character”. Most of the time, I can see the beats—like a map—but I need someone else to fly the plane for a bit to make sure I don’t crash trying to hit them. I hand in first drafts knowing that there are specific things I’ll need to add, but I also want a second (or third, if Emma’s reading for me) set of eyes on them first.
I picked our apartment in Little Cove based on its proximity to the beach and the National Park. I knew Colleen would want to hike and take photos, and I wanted to challenge myself to join her, so I made an extension. Walking up the hill was murder, but as soon as I saw the beach, I knew it: I was home. The feeling never went away. I was home when we had fish and chips on the river. I was home in the grocery store when, staring at the biscuit section, I remembered that Monte Carlos are my favourites. I was home when drove along Sunrise Road to where we used to live. The house is gone—it’s a $200K house with a million dollar view—but the shape of the pavement is the same, and I can see the improvements the new builders made.
By the time I finally dig into an edit letter, I’m mostly through all of my melodrama (I mean, except for grandstanding on Twitter, obviously. I have to keep Andrew on his toes). I like the revision almost as much as I like the drafting. I like re-visiting the things I thought were clever and fixing the things that aren’t quite there yet. I like finding the seeds I planted subconsciously and pushing them to bloom. But most of all, I like sharing it. My words are to be read.
The last time I stood in the water at Noosa beach, I whispered to the water: I am coming back. I’ve already started thinking about that trip, even with Sydney, Melbourne, Hobbiton (!!!), and Auckland on the horizon. I file those thoughts away, like I do when a shiny new project appears while I’m working on something under contract. I know I won’t forget.
It won’t take me twenty years this time.
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Product Review No One Asked For: Monte Carlos
An obvious third choice in a country that also offers the Mint Slice and the Tim Tam, Monte Carlos have a slight edge in that they are not chocolate coated, and therefore do not melt in the heat and cause a mess. Overlooked, delicious.