Washer Woman – start to finish
When you’re collecting inspiration in the beginning stages, it’s often hard to know where it’ll end up, so tagging it according to a project can be hard to do, unless you do it in retrospect. However, this project had obvious inspiration.
Inspiration
This story began with a painting and a request from my artist-friend Dave to write a myth. However, I didn ’t want to write a myth, so I was a bit stuck on how to approach it. But then I received an issue of ZYZZYVA in the mail whose cover image kicked everything into gear. These pieces of inspiration can be found here:
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/05/21/photo.227/
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/06/03/photo.278/
Notes & Drafts, Iteration after Iteration
After that, I basically wrote the main heart of a draft on the train. Not a complete draft, but the voice, characters, setting, and much of the language.
Notes can be found here, as well the the draft into which they were compiled:
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/05/22/photo.285/
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/05/26/photo.286/
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/05/22/file.226/
Then came needing to make sense of the draft, asking some hard questions, fleshing out some character details from looks to quirks to motivation. You may notice that the bum who formed the Milos character from Molasses also formed the Minks character here. At least in appearance. I also knew I wanted to explain the Washer Woman’s myth itself through her song, which presented the challenge of writing some lyrics and when in the story to reveal them.
These notes can be found here:
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/06/02/photo.288/
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/06/03/photo.321/
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/06/04/photo.322/
And subsequent drafts (note the comments which reveal the state of the draft):
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/06/03/file.280/
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/06/17/file.307/
More notes on the lyrics to the Washer Woman’s song, and thus what Minks thinks of her. The last two entries contain drafts of the lyrics themselves:
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/06/21/photo.325/
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/06/25/photo.343/
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/07/02/photo.363/
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/07/07/photo.362/
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/07/09/photo.361/
Revision notes, partial edits, and the second draft:
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/06/24/file.340/
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/07/09/file.354/
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/07/10/file.365/
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/07/22/file.385/
I sent the second draft out to a few friends for feedback, and posted their edits and notes here:
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/07/24/file.395/
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/07/31/file.406/
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/08/06/file.417/
This feedback sparked another round of note-taking, focused on filling in some holes in revealing the fear of the characters through little scenes. These notes can be found here:
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/08/14/photo.440/
Renderings
And that was that. I completed a tight first draft which I submitted to a couple contests. This can be found here:
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/08/12/file.433/
And as the term “rendering" implies, this actually went through one more change, shortening it up and killing a superfluous character (Parker), and trimming up the scenes from three deaths to only two. The final, shortened version can be found here:
http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/2008/12/22/file.536/
Tada! See how easy? As much of the thought process as is possible to capture has been captured here in these posts.
01:00 PM | 2 Comments | Tags: start-to-finish, washerwoman
Comments
- book on February 18, 2009, at 01:03 AM
- newyork on February 18, 2009, at 08:43 AM