Excerpt: NOLA Ferry

Copyright © 2011 Bob R Bogle



Chapter 10 was much shorter and easier to re-write than Chapter 9.  At this point the manuscript used to end at page 252; now it ends at page 370, and I still have a number of additional earlier chapters to write and insert.

Besides some general editing, the most important aspect of the current revision is to generate a scene-by-scene list of everything that happens in this novel.

Almost always when I write a novel, or a short story, or anything, I have a pretty good idea of what the characters are about and mostly what has to happen before I start writing.  For example, I'm starting to think right now about the next novel I want to write.  I know the grand story arc, and I know the kinds of characters to be involved in the story.  By the time I finally start writing it I'll have most of these details plotted out in some detail.

That's not how I wrote the first draft of Memphis Blues Again.  With this book I knew the setting time and place in extreme detail, and I knew some of what was to happen with the characters, but I knew none of the characters in much detail.  By the time I'd finished the first draft the characters had evolved quite a lot.  So when I'm re-writing I often have to change the dialog, to re-express concepts in words that my later conceptualizations of these people would actually use.  Occasionally I lift whole lines out of the mouth of one character and give them to another.  That sort of internal consistency thing.

This first draft manuscript is chock-full of complex ideas.  And because it was written in this free-form way, free from a guiding storyboard, as it were, or perhaps without a rudder, I sometimes repeat myself, or I have ideas appearing in an order that is not terribly logical or dramatically-satisfying.  It's so big and unwieldy that I can't remember everything that's in it.  So vital to this re-write is the scene-by-scene list of everything that happens.  When I finally finish writing draft 2 I'll finally have, in effect, a storyboard for the entire novel.  Only at that point will I be able to really think about how to order everything properly, and what can best be rearranged or excised for reasons of clarity.

Here's a short excerpt from what used to be Chapter 10 although it's presently designated Chapter 24, and I'm certain that designation will change later, too.  This minor vignette takes place on a ferry boat on the Mississippi River in New Orleans.

Nora had moved a little distance away.  She was shielding her eyes against the sunlight, looking in towards the concrete pilings at the river's edge.  He moved to join her.

"What are you looking at?"

She pointed.  "That bird."

It stood perched on an air horn that was mounted on a shallow pier-like structure.  About a dozen more of the same kind of bird milled about down on the rusty deck below.  They had soft gray wings, full white breasts, and short black legs.  Their white necks and shoulders made a distinct and prominent band between the black head and the gray plumage of the back.  They were preening themselves, or dozing, their heads turned and beaks tucked down along their spines.

"Looks like some kind of a gull," he said.

"Maybe.  But I think gulls are larger, and aren't their tails usually white?  These are black.  And I don't think I've seen that black head on a gull before."

He looked at it more closely.  "Maybe it's a shearwater," he said.  "Or perhaps a petrel."

"Do you think so?"

"I don't know.  I'm not really a bird-person."

"Oh.  I wish I knew.  Did you notice its eyes?"

"Its eyes?"

"A white spot with a horizontal band where the eye cuts across.  You can see where the tiny black eye itself is glittering.  I wonder what he's thinking about."

"Wow.  Your eyes are much better than mine."

"How long do you think a bird like that lives?"

"I don't know.  One year?  Two?"

"All of its life compressed into so little time," she said.  She sighed.  "Isn't it a beautiful creature, though?  I mean, if you take the time to really see it?"

"Yes."

"So beautiful, and so brief a life.  But all we see is just another bird.  It lives out its life, and it dies unnoticed and alone.  No chance of ever entering any history book.  No lingering memory of it once we turn away."

She turned to look at him.

"It's like a shooting star, sublime for a fraction of a second if someone happens to notice it, then it's gone forever, like it had never existed.  Isn't that sad?"

"Not many books get written about the lives of individual birds," he agreed.

She reached over and took his hands in hers.  "Look at me," she said.

He did.  He saw how intently her eyes were focused.

"Don't ever forget me."