Writing What You Love vs. Serving the Story: Making Tough Calls in Editing

The iterative process of refining and tightening your work

When I was a much younger writer, say, thirty or forty years ago, I was of the mind that almost everything I wrote was cool and should be a part of whatever story or article I was working on. Y’know, before editing! I know better now, especially when it comes to novels. When I take off my writing hat and put on my editing hat, there’s a big question to answer: What to leave in, and what has to go because it doesn’t serve a purpose? As often as not, a chapter or a scene won’t make the cut, but it was worth writing anyway, simply because it helped me identify or learn something about a character or plot issue.

Four years ago, when I started back in earnest writing fiction, one of the fun parts of writing a story, especially a longer one, was creating secondary characters because they add great flavor and substance to a novel.

Here’s the setup for this rather long chapter in my first novel that didn’t make the cut. The book, titled Dream Heart at the time, still hasn’t seen the light of day, although some version of it will be published someday, God willin’ and the creek don’t rise.

The protagonist, Jia Peach, is in her mid-twenties. No need to go deep into the story; it’s irrelevant to this post. What is relevant is that during the first draft, I created a character whom you’ll meet in a few moments. I wrote a chapter (Chapter Ten) that showed the character, Peck, in full display.

Frankly, when I re-read it again today, I chuckled because it did a great job of painting a picture of who Peck is. It digs deep into his state of mind, his challenges, the story that brought him into the book—-

But—

As I went back over the first draft, I realized that it didn’t fit. It didn’t service the story, partly due to its length. When I worked on the second draft of the novel, I found ways to slip much of this information into the story without going so deep into the weeds as I did here. But still, it was a fun exercise, and it showed me two things: a) I could put together a pretty good character sketch based on a scene in their life, and b) I learned that not everything you like really services the story.

Chapter Ten

Friday morning, 10:30

Peck painfully opened his eyes. He wasn’t ready for daylight. Not yet. His head throbbed, and he gently encircled it with both hands, covering his eyes. He hadn’t intended to drink last night – it had been almost a week since he had imbibed. Okay, maybe a good half week. Three days? But as he rounded the corner on the way back home from the grocery store, he saw Jimmy from the local small engine shop. Jimmy invited him to stop in at the bar for “just a couple of quick ones,” and Peck said yes.

He shouldn’t have said yes, and he knew it. Once you get started….

A couple of quick ones turned into a much longer night where he drank for an hour with Jimmy and then another couple of hours with the other bar patrons once Jimmy had bailed. Peck, good old friendly Peck, normally the mostly quiet and sedate Brit, but the life of the party once he got a few in him, ended up closing the place.

And now his head throbbed. Hangover City, Big Time. I hate this shit, thought Peck. Why do I persist? Why do I do this? Why is it so hard to just stop? Why can’t I have just one drink? Yes, I admit I’m an alcoholic, he thought. But I’ve been able to control it in the past. Mostly.

He turned to his right side and was startled by the shock of red hair of the woman lying naked and asleep next to him. A shot of adrenalin. Lucy? No. Obviously not. But the specter of Lucy, the vision of the girl he had loved, who had died just six months prior and sent him into the worst depression and state of his life, sent a shiver through his bones.

Peck, as imagined by DreamScape

He turned and slowly got out of bed, putting on his robe, trying to remember last night. The red-head at the bar. They came home together? Had they walked? He didn’t remember driving home, and it was only a few blocks. He couldn’t even remember if they had had sex. For all he could recall, they might have just been so drunk they simply fell asleep.

The girl’s panties, bra and other clothing were strewn across the rug next to his bed. So clearly they had de-clothed before getting in bed. Shit, if we had sex, I hope it was good. I hope I was good. Or does that even matter at this point?

He went to the foot of the bed to see if he could see the girl’s face. He could barely make it out. Couldn’t remember much about last night. Had no idea of the girl’s age. Shit, I hope she’s legal.

Regardless of his throbbing head, Peck intended to keep his morning routine. It seemed the only way to keep his sanity. Or what was left of it. But now he had to figure out how to get the girl out of here. Where did she live? She wasn’t local, he thought, because he’d never seen her before. Here in the tiny community of Zigzag, you knew most everybody that you ran into at the bar on any given night. But then again, it wasn’t that uncommon for some young woman to drive to Zigzag from Portland to seek out the aging but still semi-famous English rock drummer. It was unusual for said aging rock drummer to end up in bed with said celebrity seeker.

He looked again. The girl looked young, but best he could figure she was probably in her twenties. Twenty, at least, he thought. Hoped. She snored softly and adjusted herself in the bed. Peck took a deep breath and sighed, turned and walked to the bathroom. While he sat on the toilet, his mind went to Lucy. Lucy, always Lucy.

He remembered the exact date he had gotten the call from the police. May 21. He remembered the time on the digital clock in the bedroom when his phone chirped him out of a deep dream. 5:21 am. How do you forget something like that?

Lucy had been found a short time after midnight in the parking structure near the television station where she had worked. She had obviously been attacked. Confronted in some way. Her purse was gone. His first thought was that she had been raped, but that turned out not to be the case. Just pure robbery. Robbery gone wrong. He found small gratitude that she was not molested, but he could never shake the feeling that it was his fault. That he wasn’t there to protect her. Or that he hadn’t trained Lucy to protect herself.

Peck had asked Lucy only twice to join his martial arts class. Self-defense, he said, could come in handy someday. But it wasn’t her thing. She didn’t feel she needed it. After he asked a second time, a year after the class had been going, he stopped asking. But he had shown her a few things, basic moves designed to put a quick stop to an attacker. However, without practice, or readiness, or preparation, the ability to react quickly in a situation would not be there.

And she was gone. For good. Peck’s life spiraled immediately. He started drinking again. The martial arts class came to a close. He hid out in his mountain home, doing virtually nothing for months except subsisting. Food and booze, leaning more heavily on the booze. Going through the motions. Trying to keep some semblance of dignity and self-respect, but it was difficult.

Peck decided to let the girl sleep and pulled on his old tracksuit and hoodie and t-shirt, pulled on wool socks, frowned when he noticed a hole in the toe of one, and padded to the living room where, head still throbbing, he sat on the large rug in front of the fireplace and started his routine.

How Peck might have appeared in his mountain home the morning after.

After a half hour of meditation, he would spend ten minutes stretching, a practice he had started more than two decades ago in his early thirties. Good habits are good to have, he often thought. It didn’t always make life easier to live, but it helped center one’s focus. So maybe it did make life a little easier after all. He chuckled softly, which brought on another round of throbs of pain. Wrong again, he thought, and forced a smile. Being wrong is the best part of life. It helps you reframe and start again. Life is a series of new starts. Every new start means something is ending. Even the smallest of events. Like drinking too much the night before and waking with a pounding head. And an unknown girl in his bed.

He often wondered what it would be like to live a happy life. The Pursuit of Happiness, as enshrined in his adopted nation’s founding documents. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. The document didn’t guarantee you’d actually achieve a state of Happiness, just that you were allowed to pursue it. Whatever that meant to you. Happiness is, unfortunately, he thought, not a very descriptive word in the sense that it meant so many different things to so many different people. Not like the Pursuit of Drunkenness or the Pursuit of Three Square Meals a Day, or the Pursuit of Free Sex, or the Pursuit of Sitting on Your Ass All Day, or some other more specific pursuit. Like the Drunk Pursuit of Attractive Young Women, which he had apparently just somehow succeeded at. Or had she pursued him?