One Brain, Many Writers

In 1993, I wrote a novel, Come Undone, about a young man recovering from sexual abuse.  The story was told from Kenny’s perspective.  To highlight the immediacy of the action, I used first-person, present tense; this was not Kenny reflecting on his life, but rather the story was unfolding as the reader reads.  This was the story I wanted to tell, and it worked the way I wanted it to, to the best of my ability.

In 2005, I rewrote the book, focusing on what happened to Kenny later in life.  Now he is looking back on what the abuse meant to him.  While in the ‘93 version I tried not to shy away from writing about the abuse, still it was coded in euphemism and ineffective “hints” about what had occurred.  In this version, I wanted Kenny to be honest and direct about the abuse, his subsequent alcoholism and sexual addiction.  Again, I wrote the story to the best of my ability, and I was very pleased with it.

Except for that middle section.  That part never quite worked for me.

So, now I’m revising the book again.  The 2013 version contains a lot of the 2005 draft, but I’m reworking sections that were forced and contrived.

This is all to say that I’m a very different person now than I was in 1993 or 2005.  I trust I’m a stronger writer, but I’m discovering that the bluntness I strove for in earlier versions is a bit unsettling.  It’s much harder to write about Kenny’s self-destructive tendencies.

There is evidence in the earlier versions of literary sadism — i.e., putting my character through hell to prove how horrendous life can be.  But now I feel Kenny doesn’t have to go through every circle of Hell to discover his true self.

What does this mean for me as a writer?  I’m still me — only older, with different insights and perspectives.  I figured as a writer I’d retain the same degree of fortitude to address gritty topics.  But maybe I have to face the fact that age is softening me a bit.  And maybe being cruel to my characters doesn’t make the story more “real.”