Deathly Drafts, by Catriona

 Craft: How rough or polished are your first drafts? Do you dare show us?

Dare doesn't feel like the right word. I wouldn't show anyone - anyone! - the first draft I'm pounding out right now: not my nearest and dearest; not my agent; not my editor; not Stephen King if he phoned up and asked. Actually that last bit might be a lie. I probably would.

But, in general, I don't talk about or show anyone anything until the first draft is done, in case they say something about it and that deflates the tremulous bubble I'm gently blowing air into, watching the irridescene swirl and praying it's strong enough, despite its looks, to take to the sky once I shake it free.

Of course, I don't actually shake it free. I pop it. I kill it with a shovel. I stuff in more research than it can contain. I scribble notes on it and score out whole pages of it. I take scissors to it and staple strips of it to backing sheets, in a different order. ("Cut and paste" is not a metaphor in my process.) 

From then on I don't care who sees the first draft, in all its banality, clunkiness and typo-ridden lack of glory. I could prove this claim easily if I was at home in California, where I've got the inked-over first pages of every first draft stored away in case of blog questions like this. But I'm at home in Scotland and, although I don't pack light, there are limits.

But I can sort of prove it anyway. I've twice auctioned off hand-written first drafts for good causes. Once it was the first fifty pages of . . . Hmmmm, could have been Quiet Neighbors . . . which I wrote with an arm in a stookie, unable to type. The other time, I had happened to start writing a short story for a Bouchercon anthology, in a jotter, while waiting for a plane. It was a long flight and I had ten pages when we touched down. It occurred to me that if I kept writing it by hand I could donate it to the auction, along with the finished anthology and - crucially - the "death bag" that my story was based on.

(My sister Wendy bought a haunted evening bag on eBay, one that bled pints of bright red with a strong iron tang, into the water she tried to wash it in, even though the bag was pale cream in colour. Her son, Iain, once he had recovered from the shock of seeing his mum with arms plunged into a bowl of "blood" in the kitchen, said "Tell Auntie Catriona. She'll love it." She did.)

That's where my story "The Finishing Touch" in California Schemin' came from. What a gift!

So, since they can sometimes raise money, I don't feel ashamed of my first drafts, rough and cringe-making as they are - and they are: the mawkish resolutions! The Mary-Sues that might as well be called Phatriona McCerson! The sudden lapses out of the story and into all caps to add meta-comments like "THIS STINKS" and 'I CAN'T WRITE" and "OH BLAH BLAH BLAH KILL ME"! 

It's as if my first drafts are as haunted as that evening bag. And by a pretty grumpy ghost too.

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