"For the ♥ of David," Chapter One, Scene One

My goal, for a long time, has been to publish Chapter One, Scene One of my novel on my blog.  I'm happy to say, here it is.

Here's what I've literally been working on for years.  Here's the one thousandth version of this scene.  Here's what I've spent the last two days working on, fine-tuning, trying to get it just right, in anticipation of publishing it.  Here's what I know is far from perfect, but as good as I can make it–for now.

I hope you enjoy reading it.  I also hope I'll make you care enough about the characters to want to know what happens to them.

If you have feedback, good or bad, I'd appreciate hearing it.  I've received feedback from two beta readers so far, but I could always use more.

And if you're interested in being a long-term beta reader, even better.  Perhaps, if you're working on something, I could be your beta reader too. 

Happy reading.  

*

ONE

October 1988

I would never have met David, if he hadn’t had a hairy chest.
    Early on a Wednesday evening, the phone rang.  Its sound was out of place in my apartment, like alcohol would have been.       
    As usual, I’d arrived home late from work.  I’d finished dinner and was cleaning up.  Entertainment Tonight chatted away on the TV–about a movie, Clara’s Heart, with Whoopi Goldberg and new child actor Neil Patrick Harris.
    Tea towel in hand, I walked into the living room.
    “Hello?”
    “May I speak with Bryan, please?”
    “This is Bryan.”
    “Oh, hi.  I’m David.  I put the ad in The West Ender.  The one you answered.”
    My heart raced.  I felt lightheaded.
    For months, I’d browsed the personals, in The Georgia-Straight, The Buy & Sell, and The Vancouver Sun, finding nothing.  No future husband.  Not even a deal on a stereo.   
    Then, Friday, nearly two weeks earlier, I saw this in The West Ender:
                            GWM, 30, good looking, NS, SD,
                            employed, seeks same for LTR.  Likes
                            long walks on the beach, quiet times
                            at home, and chili.  Must love hairy chests.   
This one was different from the rest.  It sounded like me, like what I was looking for.  Especially the hairy chest part.
    Over the weekend, I left the newspaper open on the kitchen table, looking at it from time to time.  Should I, or shouldn’t I? 
    Finally, Sunday evening, I sat down to hand-write a response–see what I came up with.  If it was good enough, I might even send it in. 
    Late the following morning, I rode the Skytrain downtown.  I walked to Davie Street and hand-delivered my letter to the newspaper office (I hoped the woman there wouldn’t recognize the box number belonged to a gay ad, or misplace my envelope).  I wanted whoever had run the personal to receive my response right away.  Maybe then he’d call sooner.
    But he didn’t.  Several days went by, then a week.  Nothing.     
    Finally, I gave up.  He wasn’t interested, and I didn’t blame him.  He’d figured out I was uptight, boring, and needy.  Who’d be interested in someone like that?
    Still, I hoped.  Maybe…
    “Uh, I didn’t think you’d call.”  I tried to keep my voice even, cool, though it was shaking with nerves.
    “Oh?  Why is that?”
    “I don’t know.  Um, I guess, ah, I guess I thought if you were interested, you’d…you’d’ve called by now.”
    “Oh, it’s been hell at work lately.  This is the first chance I’ve had to get on the phone.  Well, not on the phone.”  He chuckled.  “That could be fun.  Might be a cheap thrill.”  His comment threw me.  I laughed too.
    Unfortunately, my excitement soon turned to disappointment.  The longer I listened to David talk, the less he sounded like I’d thought he would, like I’d hoped he would.
    I’d hoped he’d sound masculine.  His chest was hairy, after all.  Weren’t hairy-chested men masculine?  Didn't they have manly-sounding voices? 
    Not David.
    “I work for a beauty supply company downtown,” he told me.  I didn’t know any masculine men who worked for beauty supply companies.  Come to think of it, I didn’t know any masculine men?  “We supply salons, from Vancouver to the Fraser Valley, with everything from combs to chairs.” 
    Not only was his voice not masculine, but it sounded…gay–his words too carefully enunciated, his pitch sing-songy, like a woman’s.  And, worse, you’d have thought he had a chronic bad cold.  Everything came out nasal.
    “Oh, please, Louise,” David said.  “Don’t get me started.  The stories I could tell you about salons.  They’d curl your hair–no perm needed.”  I cringed at David’s campiness. 
    He was talking about what he did for a living, but what I heard him say was, I’m not the man for you.
    “Your letter makes you sound like a barfly.”  David laughed.
    “I guess I am.”  I laughed too.  “If going to the clubs every weekend, hoping to meet the right guy, makes you a barfly.” 
    “What clubs might I have seen you at?”
    “I usually go to the Gandy.”
    “Me too.  I was there just last Saturday.”
    “So was I.”  David and I might have seen each other.  Had we given the other a second look?
    “Please tell me you didn’t have a tie-dyed T-shirt on.”
    “No, I didn’t.  Why?”
    “Thank God.  Did you see her on the dance floor, wearing that shit-eating grin?”  David chuckled.  “She bounced up and down like she had a pogo stick up her ass."   
    I busted into laughter.  "No, I missed that.  Sounds like she was something.”
    “Oh, she was something, all right.  Just what, I’m not sure.  Lady Tie-Di–that’s what I called her.”  I caught the reference to Lady Diana Spencer.
    “I wish I’d seen her.”
    “No you don’t.  Believe me.” 
    “Okay, maybe I don’t.”
    “And Princess Foo.”  David chuckled again.
    “Who?”
    “Not who.”  His voice was louder.  “Foo.  Princess Foo.”
    I laughed.  “Never heard of her.”
    “She was too much for Hollywood.  The way she carried on, you’d’ve thought she was Asian royalty or something.”  He laughed again.  “What she was wearing, I have no idea.  Looked like some kind of military getup.  And you should have seen her dance–stood in one spot, shuffled her feet, and smoked cigarettes, like she was fucking Joan Crawford.”  I was laughing so hard, I could scarcely hear David.
    Whether I was relaxed, in a good mood, or enthralled by David’s stories, I thought he was funny.  Seriously funny.  It seemed the more animated he became, the funnier he got. 
    “What does it take to find a goddamn husband around here?” David lamented, our conversation turning from characters in the clubs, to why we went to them.  “I’ll be thirty-fucking-one in December.  That’s eighty-nine in gay years.”  I laughed, understanding what he meant.  “My eggs are shrivelling.  I have to give birth soon, or that’ll be it for me.”   
    I’ll never forget how much fun David and I had on that first call.  I couldn’t remember when I’d last talked with someone so laugh-out-loud funny.
    But what I kept thinking about–what I really wanted to know–was how hairy his chest was.
    I went to ask several times, but stopped myself.  What if he thought I was too forward? 
    Be patient, I thought.  You’ll see when you meet.
    But what if we didn’t meet?  Then I’d never know. 
    “Can I ask a question?” I blurted.
    “That depends, on the question.”
    I laughed nervously.  “Well, I was wondering…you know, about your chest.  How hairy is it?”
    David went silent.  Then:  “You girls are all alike.  You only want a man for his body.”
    His reaction caught me off guard.  Was he serious?
    “Well, your ad said, ‘Must love hairy chests.’  So I thought…I thought you wouldn’t mind if I, um, asked how hairy yours is.”
    David sighed loudly, impatiently.
    “I–I guess that was the wrong question.”  I attempted a laugh, but I felt awful, concerned I’d ruined the good impression I thought I’d made.  “I’m sorry.  I–”
    David burst into laughter.
    I sucked in my breath.  “You bugger.”  I released my anxiety in a nervous laugh.  “You really had me going there.  I thought I’d offended you.”
    David was oddly quiet, then–quieter than he’d been any time during our call.
    “Well?” I persisted.
    “What?”  He was playing with me, had to be. 
    “How hairy are you?”
    Silence.  Then:  “Remember Grover on Sesame Street?”
    Sesame Street?  What?  Where was this going?
    “Sort of.”  Which one was Grover?  Big Bird, Ernie and Bert, and a Muppet in a garbage can–I remembered them.  But not Grover.  “Why?”
    “Well, I am hairy like Grover,” David said, breaking into a falsetto growl.  Of course.  Grover.  How could I forget?
    I lost it, then.  Both of us did.  David was comparing himself–how hairy he was–to a puppet.  I laughed so hard, tears ran down my face.  My cheeks, head, and stomach couldn’t take much more.
    “But I am not a pretty blue,” David growled.
    Then it hit me.  Holy crap.  He wasn’t that hairy, was he?  Nobody was. 
    “I don’t know about you,” David said, twenty minutes into our call, “but I want to get together.” 
    “You mean, now?”
    “Yeah.  Why not?  I can’t wait until the weekend to meet in person.” 
    “Neither can I.”
    “Good.  It’s settled, then.” 
    “Where do you want to meet?”  I told him I didn’t have a car, and transit at that time of the day could be iffy. 
    “I have a car,” David offered.
    “How ‘bout my place?”  As soon as I’d said it, I panicked.  “It’ll take an hour to get here, though.  And you might not find parking.”
    “Not a problem.  I live in the West End, remember?  And I walk almost everywhere.  So I look for excuses to get in the car and drive.”
    “Are you sure?”
    I’m the one who wasn’t sure.  Would I be ready to meet David–in an hour?  Did my apartment look okay?  Did I look okay?
    I gave him my address.
    “Very good.”  Then, in that falsetto growl again, he added, “Grover looks forward to meeting you.”
    The human Muppet was on his way.   
    When I hung up, I realized the mistake I'd made.  I should have suggested we meet in a coffee shop or restaurant–some public location.  Axe murderers were less likely to strike with other people around.         

I Really Have Something

Over five years. 

Recently, I was looking for a document in one of the files I started during the initial planning of my novel.  I couldn't believe the date on it:  March 16, 2010.

Over five years ago, I began work on my novel.  Five years already.  The time's gone fast.  A lot has happened:  We had an unfortunate and serious falling out with our next-door neighbors (they moved away this summer); I had my first colonoscopy; and I broke my arm, recovering from that over the next months.  While we create, life goes on.    

Last month, I looked up from what I was doing and realized I'd completed all the major rewrites of my novel.  I'd had eleven chapters left (22 to 32).  I'd gone through each one to identify which needed full rewrites–to bring them up to the standard of the rest I'd been working on for years–and which needed only fine-tuning.  Since then, the full rewrites are done, and I'm well on my (sometimes frustrating, but often exhilarating) way to fine-tuning those last chapters.  

And the thought occurred to me:  I REALLY HAVE SOMETHING HERE.   

When I consider where I've taken my novel so far, I'm impressed by the breadth and scope of the narrative.  I can't believe the journey my characters and I have been on, where we've been, what we've done together.  And, as I consider those final eleven chapters, I'm impressed by how the pace is picking up, building to that all-important and exciting climax.  I feel it inside me.  It propels me forward.    

This is all new to me.  

Sure, over thirty years ago, I wrote another novel, start to finish, while I worked full-time for a bank.  Sort of.  The first two hundred or so pages were more planning than anything (this character will do this; that character will do that), which I realized, later rather than sooner, was ridiculous.  Instead of planning to write, why not write?  So I turned it around, got the characters acting for themselves, took them to the end of their stories.   

But that novel, as it turned out, was more about proving I could discipline myself enough to get the job done, not about putting in all the hard work needed to complete the thing.  As luck would have it, it also prepared me, in ways I couldn't have imagined, for my experience now.   

I can't even describe how exciting it is to be where I am.  This has been a life-long dream.  Ever since I was a little boy, I've wanted to be a writer.  I've dreamed about writing a book, one that might actually be good enough to submit for publication somewhere.  With the advancements in publishing today, I don't even have to submit my novel anymore (although that's still the plan).  If I want, I can self-publish.  Lots of writers are doing that, even important ones.  There isn't the stigma around it that there used to be.  It's an option.

It's easy to get caught up in what you're doing and forget to celebrate the milestones.  But I'm not going to do that.   

Tomorrow is my fifty-sixth birthday.  Not only will I celebrate that milestone age for me, but also I plan to celebrate what I've achieved so far in writing my novel.  I deserve to.  I've stuck with it, and I've done the work–half an hour, an hour, two, three, four, five at a time, day after day, week after week, month after month, looking at the same thing over, and over, and over, sometimes soaring with exhilaration, other times thinking I'll throw up if I have to look at this again.  I've stuck with this story over the long-haul.  I've believed in it, believed how important it is, when, countless times, I could have moved on to other projects, wanted desperately to move on to new, shinier, more enticing things, in the hope one of them would stick.  Had I done that, I wouldn't be where I am now.   

With only fine-tuning left to do before my novel is finished, I feel an excitement that I hope all aspiring writers will feel.  That I hope you'll feel.  Because I don't think there's anything more fulfilling.  To think that you've done what you've done, and an end's in sight…  

Wow!  

For a writer, at least at this stage of the process, I don't think it gets better than that. 

Keep writing.  Hang in there.  Everything you're going?  It's worth it.  It's so worth it.  Believe me.

Don't give up.  NEVER give up. 

Transposing

So one of the techniques I frequently use when I revise my work is what I called "transposing."  Here's how it works.

Rather than take the draft I have now and revise it in the same computer file, I use it only as a guide.  With a hard copy of that draft beside me, I retype it from the beginning.  Only, as I go along, rather than type exactly what I had before–which would be nothing more than creating a second draft of the same thing–I leave myself open to whatever changes come to me, getting them down.       

In effect, I create entirely new drafts, which are almost always better than the old drafts.  The act of retyping the draft from the beginning forces you to see every word.  And forcing yourself to see every word means you'll be less likely to gloss over them, to think they're great or fine or whatever, simply because they're there, already in place.  In other words, transposing forces you to play a more active role in creating your work.       

Try this method if you like.  It might work for you.

Breaks

Chris's vacation time has not been good for my writing this summer.  Or maybe it has been. 

First, he had two and a half weeks off in August.  Then, after just three days back to work, he had another week and a half in September.  (I know.  Don't ask.)

Today, he returned to work, and so did I, on my novel.  And it turns out the break was a good one.

When I sat down to continue revisions on Chapter 22 and Chapter 23, Scenes 1 and 2, I saw these pieces as though I hadn't written them myself.  In other words, I saw them with clarity.  And ideas on changes I should make came easily and quickly, which I'm hopeful improved my writing overall.

So when professional writers recommend taking breaks from your writing–as long as possible–before continuing revisions, believe them.  They know what they're talking about.

All the time I've taken away from my writing this summer, because my partner Chris was on vacation, and I will never choose my writing over him, made a big difference.  I recommend it.

It turns out, break time from your writing is constructive time too. 

Those First Five Pages

If ever there was a time to ensure our first five pages–hell, our first page, or less–is absolutely perfect, it's right now.

I've never been one to sit in a bookstore and read the first five pages of a book before deciding to buy it.  I think that's because I'm too caught up in the excitement of being in a bookstore to settle down and focus on reading a number of pages.  I want to take in everything that's there and be a part of it (just smelling the paper and ink in the air inspires me).  I'll settle down and focus, book in hand, when I return home. 

But, these days, if you're technologically savvy and interested in a book, all you have to do is go to iBookstore on your iPad, and, for free, download what, as far as I can tell, is the first chapter of any book available.  That's right–FOR FREE. 

In the comfort of your home, without risking a cent, you can download the first chapter of nearly any book and sample it.  You might not even need the entire first chapter to make up your mind whether you want to spend money on the book.  You might know within the first paragraphs.  The first sentences?  Yikes!

That's a scary prospect for any writer, hoping not only to be published, but also to be read.  And, not only to be read, but to have their work bought.  With the attention spans of most people today, it's a wonder any writer makes money.  (Is any writer, other than some pretty awful ones, their books seemingly always on the bestseller lists, making money today?) 

And, I hasten to add, fewer and fewer professionals write reviews of books for newspapers and magazines.  Anyone and everyone can do that now, with no particular writing or critical ability, on websites like goodreads.com.  So, if your book fails on any level, get ready for readers to tears it apart.  Because that's what some do, holding little back, it seems.

All the more reason to polish those first few pages until you can see yourself in them.    

Put the Good Stuff Last

What's wrong with this sentence I found in a recent issue of The Vancouver Sun?

When Adam Saint's year-long lease was nearing its end, the West End building's owner Gordon Nelson Inc. jumped the price to $1,850 from $1,550.

I can think several ways I would improve it, but here's the point I want to make in this post–and what I've read in some writing books, which I agree with:  Put the good stuff last.

When we revise our sentences, sometimes, to ensure we make the points we intend to, we need to look at a sentence, decide what's most important, and put it at the very end.

In the case of the above example, it seems to me the most important piece is what Adam Saint's rent increased to.  So rather than put that detail second to the last in the sentence, it should go at the end, like this (along with a few more changes):

When Adam Saint's year-long lease neared its end, the West End building's

owner Gordon Nelson Inc. jumped the price from $1,550 to $1,850.

Now, when you read that, you should be stunned knowing first what the previous rent was, and second what it was increased to.  

As writers, I don't believe we need to do this with every sentence we write.  But I think we have to agree some sentences are more important, more pivotal, than others.  They are the ones we need to pay attention to.  They are the ones we need to put the good stuff last in.

Extra Words

Sometimes, how we say something finds its way into our writing, and that may not always be for the best.      

My beta reader, RG, caught me using the verb "blurt out," when only blurt was needed.  To confirm he was right, I looked up the definition of "blurt."  Here's what I found:  "say (something) suddenly and without careful consideration."  "Out" wasn't needed at all to get across the meaning I intended.   

In a local newspaper, I found the following:  "Work is underway on fixing up the former Sleep Shop building…."  "On" and "up" aren't needed.  Doesn't "Work is underway fixing the former Sleep Shop building" sound better, more concise, clearer?

In a memoir I finished reading yesterday, I found this:  "I shivered and wrapped myself up in the towel and made my way back to my room."  See the opportunities for improvement?  Again, "up" isn't needed, along with the first "and."  With a little more revision, here's what this sentence could look like:  "I shivered, wrapped myself in the towel, and returned to my room." 

I realize I'm being picking, but, according to all the writing manuals, writing shouldn't contain even one more word than is necessary.  Our responsibility, then, is to ensure our writing is lean, while still keeping our meaning clear.  In most cases, eliminating unnecessary words has that exact result.  

Something to think about when revising.