How are your tent caterpillars?

Ernest Hemingway rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times. When asked why, he said he rewrote it to get the words right.

Yesterday I walked along a sunny road on the edge of Mount Maxwell. It was bordered by thick rows of enormous foxgloves, some of which towered over my 172 cm / 5’ 8” height. Later, when I mentioned it to my sister, she commented only weeks before when she walked it, she’d had to push her way through all the tent caterpillars.

Word count: 344                                    Reading time: 1-2 minutes

Not long ago my novel Lockdown was in the same state as that mountain trail in the spring: sticky with tent caterpillars. It had been part of me for so long that I was unable to see its flaws. Then I skyped with my editor, Anita Daher and she turned the light on. The spidery webs started to fall away and a few flower spikes nudged their heads into the sunshine. Those blooms only started to open after more rewriting.

The editing process is far from being a pleasant summer’s walk on a favourite mountain trail. It’s more like hiking the same terrain in autumn, winter, spring and summer and contemplating the different perspectives that each rewrite brings.

I think my novel is getting close to its full glory, although I have a draft or two to run through yet. To help get there, I remember the beautiful flowers that rise out of the caterpillar silk. As I work through the next reiterations, I’ll model my attitude on John Irving’s: I think what I've always recognized about writing is that I don't put much value in so-called inspiration. The value is in how many times you can redo something.

How many times have you rewritten your latest scene, story, or book? Are you like Hemingway, rewriting the same page thirty-nine times? When someone suggests you rewrite something, do you perceive that as a punishment or as an opportunity to bring the work to greater power and clarity? Are there bright spring flowers poking through the caterpillar plague?

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Photos from Wikimedia Commons:

Abstract art in the hedgerow by Penny Mayes

Digitalis purpurea by Nevit Dilmen

Pick and choose

 Word count: 460                         Reading time: 1-2 mins

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. Ralph Waldo Emerson.

When summer finally arrived in the Pacific Northwest (last week) I was on Salt Spring Island. Summer on SSI means swimming in lakes, hummingbirds thrumming, eagles whistling, and hiking the gentle mountains in the company of a golden dog. Roadside farm stands groan under the weight of organic produce and at Artspring, the island’s main arts venue, there are concerts and exhibitions.

On the other sides of this heavenly coin:

• it takes a half a day to get to SSI from Vancouver and BC Ferries seems to have forgotten its mandate to be part of the highway system as the fares ratchet ever higher.
• the house here uses aquifer well water. The rain stops in June and doesn't start again until September. That means constant vigilance about water use, listening for the sound of the pump which signals the time to turn off the taps. Showers are short. A soaker tub would be an obscenity.
• the gorgeous birds that sing outside the window feed on a wide array of insects. At night the thousands of bugs that didn't end up as bird food swarm through the screens and cracks in the doors and congregate in the bedroom, throwing themselves in my face as I attempt to savour the best moment of the day, my reading time.
• lake access is limited and the small beaches are often crowded.
• spiders lay eggs in the corners as soon as I dust them (which isn't often).

None of that matters. When I think of SSI in summer I remember only the very best parts: the great walks, the buzz of the farmer’s markets, and the soothing silence at night, broken only by the call of the barred owls. As I hiked up Mount Maxwell on Sunday a loose sock rubbed a blister on my heel, but I was too taken by the fragile Garry Oak meadow to notice until much later.

So let it be with my writing. I have to choose to let my strong scenes move me forward and forget about the times that the words fall flat and lifeless on the page. I have to remember the idyllic moments when the stories flow from my fingers and forget the moments when dull clichés launch themselves at me like desperate insects at a slim beacon of light. I have to choose today as the best day ever to write.

What choices are you making today to keep yourself motivated? When you feel the blister of discouragement do you look ahead to the next bloom of inspiration or do you stop hiking for a while?

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Photo by: Alan Bolitho, LM