Early reviews

One friend and occasional Discerning Reader hates it when I write about writing in this space. "I don't give a #$%^ about your artistic process," he once told me. To be fair, he was drinking at the time and he honestly intended his comment to be helpful. It was Pliny the Elder who said "in vino veritas" (truth comes out in wine). My friend will be sadly disappointed today.

A while back I gathered a group of seven willing volunteers to read through the second draft of my book Carnival Time and to advise me on how to improve the third draft. I dubbed the group C-Tab (for Carnival Time Advisory Board). Several of the members of C-Tab are in publishing (one is an actual book editor). Others were qualified for this job strictly on the basis of their love for books or for me. They took the job seriously, and these people cannot know how grateful I truly am.

The process has been painful. I admonished the board to be brutally honest, but I was secretly hoping they would tell me that the book is a masterpiece--don't change a thing. That's not what happened. They took me at my word.

First they showed me all the typos and grammar errors. I'm a pretty good writer. How did I make that many mistakes? It was embarrassing looking at that sea of red ink and cleaning up the mess.

Then there were the errors of fact and plot. A Greek god became Roman, my timeline had huge problems, a Toyota in one chapter became a Hyundai in another, names were used inconsistently, etc. Still embarrassing, but easily fixed.

After that, they pointed out all of the things in the book they hated. The problem with this most subjective part of the evaluation process is that they all found plenty to hate, but they didn't hate the same things. Some found particular sections of dialogue stilted or clumsy (apparently my cops say annoying things). Most of them detested the heavy-handed travel guide to New Orleans and explanations of Mardi Gras culture that appear periodically and bring the plot to a screeching halt. Several loathed the names of a number of the minor characters (especially Kent Clark and Major Al "I get that a lot" Pacino). Most were baffled by the motivations of both the main good guy and the main bad guy. Why are these people doing any of this?

One of the readers, a gay New Orleanian who attended a Catholic girls' school, took issue with the authenticity of the book in all three of those areas of her personal experience as depicted in the book. Several characters in the book are either gay or have ambiguous sexual orientations, so I expected comments about things they said or did, but my C-Tab member's only real complaint in that area was the name I gave for a gay bar. It was all wrong for that particular type of gay bar. But it was certain depictions of New Orleans society and the girls' school backstory that she found most offensive. My Cajun hotel desk clerk sent her completely over the edge, for instance. "Remember, people in New Orleans are going to read this," she warned me ominously in a way that made me see the torches and pitchforks all the way from my Alabama office.

The most puzzling comment from a member was about a particular line of dialogue that he found "too Leave it to Beaver." I still don't know what he meant by that, but I rewrote the line anyway.

I was especially discouraged when board members disliked parts of the book I thought were particularly strong, and that has happened a few times. There were times when they loved chapters or sections that weren't my own favorites, which pleased and surprised me. Then there were sections that some loved while others hated. What do I do with that information?

So, armed with literally thousands of comments and with more still coming, I've been plowing though the book yet again, with a goal of having the third draft finished before Christmas. I've written new sections, chopped out old ones and changed something in virtually every sentence. The sections that are being revised most dramatically are the ones that C-Tab commented on most consistently. I'm trying to heed the admonition of one of them in a recent e-mail. "You know what they say: when one person tells you have a tail, you don't have to look, when two tell you, you don't, but when three or more do, it may be in your best interest to look...

In almost every way this third draft has been the most difficult to write. The first came fairly easily, the second just fixed the most obvious problems of the first (not enough of them, however), but the third is the real challenge. Even though I now know the biggest problems, writing better is very challenging. Frankly, I'm surprised by that. Is it possible to have writer's block with something you've already written? Apparently so.