We’ve come full circle, you, dear reader, and I.
I’m at the point in my new draft where I’m revising sections that I’ve already posted here. Sections that I told you were better. Sections that I led you to believe were good.
My mistake.
“The Market”, posted Aug. 19 walked you through my process of trying to describe a street market in Stone Town, in the Second World, an experience wholly foreign to Lyra.
Here’s what I wrote:
I started over:
The market does not disappoint. It is a carnival, a street party, a kaleidoscope of sights and sounds and smells—cinnamon and saffron from the spice sellers and sweet mangos and papayas from the fruit sellers and fresh bread and croissants from the bakers. She and David are shoulder-to-shoulder, stepping sideways through the boisterous crowd, an uneven assortment of vendors, sellers and tourists, who, Lyra notices, are very much like her. She watches a wrinkled old woman, her eyes sunken by her loose skin, prod a tall, white First World backpacker to examine a handcrafted blue beaded bracelet; Lyra sees a sun-beaten middle-aged man, his food stall almost empty, retrieve crates of black olives from his dusty farm truck and replenish his supplies; she smiles at a gangly brown pre-teen who, over the yap of a mangy mutt beside him, bargains loudly with a reticent shoe seller for a pair of brilliantly yellow-neon soccer cleats. The boy must have prevailed; he skips away with his prize, his dog trotting happily at his heels.
I like that I’ve focused on individuals (the wrinkled woman, the sun-beaten man) and I like my specific detail (neon soccer cleats). More importantly, I feel it’s now in Lyra’s voice.
Meh.
That’s the generous version of my reaction to this passage–yet I was all for this description only a few months ago. Now, I see it doesn’t fit Lyra’s reaction to this strange new land. (She’d be more jaded, more guarded of the new experience).
So here’s what I have now:
She’s never been to the Second World before; never wanted to. Why would anyone want to, when they have so many diverse and expansive cultures to experience in their own First World? Her mom has been here with the Orchestra, but always Lyra would leave the room when Charlotte regaled the family with travel stories. Lyra hated that her mother rubbed in her face how much fun she was having away from home. As a result, Stone Town seems to her as foreign as the moon.
David steers her into the market, a cacophony of sounds, a kaleidoscope of colors, a frantic swell of people. Lyra feels as if she’s sauntered unwittingly into a circus, a carnival, a street party. She smells cinnamon and saffron from the spice sellers and sweet mangos and papayas from the fruit sellers and fresh bread and croissants from the bakers. Vendors, hawkers, street artists of all shapes and sizes and colors, costumed in all manner of dress, from long robes and skirts to jeans and shorts, shout and cry and cajole potential customers, who themselves look and dress like a jumble of mismatched dolls. She has stumbled into a storybook, walking among the vivid creations of a wide-eyed author and illustrator, whose bright, cheery ideas of a cosmopolitan world have suddenly sprung to life. In one corner is a dog—of course there is a dog—yapping at the heels of a boy, maybe 10, who throws money at a mousy merchant and races away from a shoe stall, a pair of neon green soccer cleats slung victoriously around his neck. On the other side is an old crone—of course there is an old crone—a thin, stooped woman, her eyes sunken like craters into her wrinkled skin. In the center of it all is an outsider—of course there is an outsider—a tall, lanky, white First-World backpacker, grinning childishly at the boisterous chaos surrounding him.
Lyra recoils from the frenzy, overwhelmed by its unruly energy. She longs for the calm, the order of her world and only with a great strength of will does she remind herself that she has to put up with this chaos to protect the rightful order of the First World.
This description is more consistent with Lyra’s reluctance to come to the Second World; it better fits the overall tone of the novel.
So I like it better.
But then, didn’t I say that about the previous draft?
Which makes me wonder what I’ll think of this version in three months…
Which makes me wonder what I’ll think of that version three months after that…
Which makes me wonder if this book will ever be completed…
But then, I remind myself of a famous paraphrase (attributed to many different writers over the years), a book is never finished; it’s only abandoned. 🙂
At some point, I will let this story fall from my hands, then let the chips fall where they may.
But maybe not just yet…
Maybe just one more draft…
(And maybe just one more draft after that…)