The poet Paul Verlaine once said that a piece of writing is never finished, only abandoned. That’s certainly something that resonates with me. I write very slowly, going over the draft more and more times; and even then keep pushing it, trying to make sure it’s completely coherent and self-contained. It’s a process that seems to fit the production of short stories (I’m currently putting together a collection), which by their nature can seem to resemble a polished fragment or shard, speaking to wider human experience by focusing on a single patch of time.
The challenge, of course, is that once you’ve gone through quite a number of drafts, the piece becomes like one of those things you’re so close to, you can’t see it anymore. Then the only thing to do is to set it aside –for at least a couple of days; longer if you can. For me, it has to be almost long enough to forget the making of it.
Afterwards, re-reading the story as though it had been written by someone else is usually pretty wince-making. All sorts of problems jump out – but at least they show a way forward. And then the redrafting and experimenting begins again until a better method that works is found.
Finally, though, and with great relief, there comes the moment when it’s possible to ‘abandon’ the story with a bit more satisfaction.
Below is a series of drafts of the same short story’s opening page, to show this editing process in action. Are my changes for the better? Draw the reader in more, make you want to read on? It’s up to you to decide.
First draft:
Title: Street
I first heard the stories about Billy Niemann the summer I turned twelve. Billy was hardly ever seen in public by then, but walking home from school the older boys would sometimes shake the tall bars of his mother’s front gate, shouting in falsetto voices, “Billy, I’m so lonely! Won’t you come and hold my little hand?” and we might glimpse him starting up from the stoep in his dressing-gown, that colossal grey head quivering as we scattered back out of reach, laughing and slapping palms all the way up the road.
When people talked of Billy Niemann it was always with a special voice and lowered glance, because twenty-five years ago he had been a bull of a boy, handsome, with his mother’s black curls and red lips, and the best prop forward the school coach had ever seen, with lightning acceleration. Every summer at Kelly’s Beach you’d find him battling through the breakers in his lifeguard’s cap, towing back to safety a drunk who’d swum out on a dare, a matron with cramp in her slabby calves or a sobbing youngster, twirled away by a sudden current from the deep.
His mother was godvrugtig, very devout. The family was wealthy, too, but made a big show of living the simple life, as if to prove their piety; always, at a braaivleis or in the bar of the Victoria Hotel, Bill would take nothing stronger than a sip of Coke. His mother couldn’t wait to broadcast how he was bound for glory, all that, when he first left home, for Billy – like all white boys back then – got called up into the South African Defence Force as soon as he turned 18. She was even prouder when the army sent him to Angola, because that way he’d see combat in the Border war. But then on his first pass home Billy cornered in a back room the teenager who washed his mother’s floors, tying her down first with a coil of wire. His mother paid the girl’s family off; she took the view, people said, that some wierd foreign virus had wormed its way into her boy’s brain. On his next leave, though, Billy turned up at the school gates, pressing on the girls gifts of his own sperm – stored, the story goes, in those plastic bags banks use to issue coins – and after that his ma couldn’t shield him. The mental hospital came with an ambulance, and three thickset orderlies. What funds he had to live on when they finally let him go were from his mother’s investments, and when she died (of a broken heart, some said) he scarcely stirred from her house again.
The first time I stopped by his place was to do something forbidden, to spite my stepfather behind his back. He’d whacked my head with a rolled-up magazine and yelled that I was an asshole for losing my cellphone a second time in a month, even though, earlier, I’d got a brainwave that said ‘laundry basket’, and ja, the phone was there. So I tore off down the street, smarting with rage. It was building up for noon and fiercely hot, the sky bright as tin. Billy’s gate was locked as usual, but the low branch of an old jacaranda made a serpentine springboard across the boundary wall. I sat on the branch a moment, listening to the faint, persistent ticks and twitches and knockings which jacaranda pods, restive in their warm-air bath, make all day. Everything else was quiet, and that made me quiet too, but I could still make out the snarl of a mower as, four doors down, my stepfather razed our wilting lawn.
Billy’s place was a mess. In the garden, tangled grass and weeds choked the flowerbeds. Water seeped from the guttering along the back wall of the house, leaving a greenish patch like a slimy cocoon. The stoep was a wilderness of litter, rusty garden chairs and an enormous elephant’s ear plant which had burst its paint-tin pot. But nothing stirred.
Second draft:
Title: Never Let Me Go
I was watching The Simpsons when my stepfather stuck his big face round the door and stared at me, all triumphant-like. Next thing I knew, he was whacking my head with a rolled-up wildlife magazine and yelling that I was an asshole. He’d heard from my ma that I’d lost my cellphone again – or that’s what he thought. I was nearly twelve that summer and knew better than to mouth off to him, even though I’d already found the damn phone in the laundry basket, stowed in the pocket of my school trousers among the lint and loose change. I wanted to wrench that magazine from my stepfather’s hands and stamp on it, but I didn’t dare. I just tore off out the house instead.
Billy’s house was the best place I could think of to go to for something forbidden, to spite my stepfather behind his back. Billy Niemann was hardly ever seen in public by then, but walking home from school the older boys would sometimes shake the tall bars of his mother’s front gate, shouting in falsetto voices, “Billy, I’m so lonely! Won’t you come and hold my little hand?” and we might glimpse him starting up from the stoep in his dressing-gown, that colossal grey head quivering as we scattered back out of reach, laughing and slapping palms all the way up the road.
The day I visited it was drawing near to noon and blazing hot, the sky bright as tin. Billy’s gate was locked as usual, but the low branch of an old jacaranda made a serpentine springboard across the boundary wall. I sat on the branch a moment, listening to the faint, persistent ticks and twitches and knockings which jacaranda pods, restive in their warm-air bath, make all day. Everything else was quiet, and that made me quiet too, but I could still make out the snarl of a mower as, four doors down, my stepfather razed our wilting lawn.
I thought of the stories people told. When anyone spoke of Billy Niemann it was always with a special voice and lowered glance, because he had been a bull of a boy once, handsome, with his mother’s black curls, and the best prop forward the school coach had ever seen, with lightning acceleration. Every summer at Kelly’s Beach you’d find him battling through the breakers in his lifeguard’s cap, towing back to safety a drunk who’d swum out on a dare, a matron with cramp in her slabby calves or a sobbing youngster, twirled away by a sudden current from the deep.
His mother was godvrugtig, very devout. The family was wealthy, too, but made a big show of living the simple life, as if to prove their piety; always, at a braaivleis or in the bar of the Victoria Hotel, Bill would take nothing stronger than a sip of Coke. His mother couldn’t wait to broadcast how he was bound for glory, all that, when he first left home, for Billy – like all white boys back then – got called up into the South African Defence Force as soon as he turned 18. She was even prouder when the army sent him to Angola, because that way he’d see combat in the Border war. On his first pass home, however, Billy cornered and hurt in an outbuilding the old man who kept his mother’s garden neat, tying him down first with a coil of wire. His mother paid the old man’s family off; she took the view, people said, that some outlandish foreign virus had perhaps wormed its way into her boy’s brain.
But then on his next leave Billy turned up at the school gates, pressing on the girls gifts of his own sperm – stored, the story goes, in those plastic bags banks use to issue coins – and after that his ma couldn’t shield him. The mental hospital came with an ambulance, and three thickset orderlies. What funds he had to live on when they finally let him go were from his mother’s investments, and when she died (of a broken heart, some said) he scarcely stirred from her house again.
All this was in my mind as, hardly breathing, I sank to the ground. Billy’s place was a mess. In the garden, tangled grass and weeds choked the flowerbeds. Water seeped from the guttering along the back wall of the house, leaving a greenish patch shaped like a long cocoon. The stoep was a wilderness of litter, rusty garden chairs and an enormous elephant’s ear plant which had burst its paint-tin pot. But nothing stirred.
Third draft:
Title: Security
The thief stood watching us from the upstairs landing. He’d broken a side window to get into our home, cutting his hand, while my mother and I picked leaves from Mrs Xaba’s mulberry tree that overhung our small, neat lawn. Silkworms were the craze at school that summer and the mulberry leaves were for my collection, although foraging for their food was a chore I’d got bored with after only a week. Climbing our narrow stairs, pressing a bloodied thumb upon the landing window-sill, the thief paused to watch my mother clamber onto a garden chair and flutter her pale hands up towards the dancing leaves, beseeching me in her soft, anxious voice to take proper care of my possessions, to be more responsible, and to stop tearing the tips from that aloe bush and give her a helping hand. Then the thief had rifled through my mother’s underwear drawer, emptying over it strings of hair and soiled tissues from the bathroom bin before stuffing her jewellery into a pillowcase and departing as swiftly as he came.
Everybody had been very kind – the two policemen; the gold-toothed detective; the Fingerprints Guy with his little brush. Yet they all said the same thing: in the matter of home security, my mother was falling short. Never mind that ours was a small country town in the middle of the Great Karoo, the threat of attack always waited: the crime could have been much worse. An eight-foot-high, multi-zone electric fence was what he had at home, explained the older of the two policemen, shaking his head at our white picket fence over which my mother had trained bougainvillea in an exuberant wave. A motion-sensor alarm system and a panic button wired to a rapid-response team, licensed to shoot – that’s what he used to keep the skollies out, nodded the Fingerprints Guy. Put it this way, said the tall, grey-haired salesman who came to give us a quote for more burglar bars, you had to be tough to live in South Africa nowadays.
My mother listened and nodded, wiping away tears. She wept easily, and apologised often for doing so. Her boy’s safety and stability was her life’s work, she told the tall salesman in a trembling voice. She had only herself to blame for making such a mess of things. Then she brewed him a cup of coffee, mentioning for the second time my father’s death in a car crash before I was even born.
The salesman replied that his name was Pienaar, but that she could call him Pete. He saw what she was up against, he said, moving his grizzled head slowly towards her and flexing his heavy hands. A woman all on her own, raising a laaitie in a world where it was difficult to know who to trust. And yet it was obvious that she had been trying her best.
Mr Pienaar’s voice was deep and strong. I couldn’t imagine it ever becoming nervous or wobbly or shrill with unshed tears, or in any way appearing to be afraid. It was a solid voice, as solid as Mr Pienaar himself.
My mother offered Mr Pienaar another cup of coffee and after that, a glass of wine. Neighbours – they could also be a problem, Mr Pienaar continued, resenting constructive criticism of their security arrangements and a bit of expert advice. He’d noticed a property not three doors down that was all gone to seed – Billy Niemann’s, my mother breathed, gazing at him with shining eyes – which must be a magnet for thugs and rapists for miles around. That kind of thing could give even the bravest little woman the jitters, Mr Pienaar said. If it was up to him, he’d chuck the poepal who owned it in a jail cell and throw away the key.
By the time my mother hastened me up to bed with a sandwich on a tray, she and Mr Pienaar were sipping their third glasses of wine. “Your home should be a sanctuary for you and your family,” Mr Pienaar murmured, touching my mother’s small wrist. “Your home is the only environment where you have control over who can get close. When it comes to protection, don’t you think you deserve the best?”
About Melissa de Villiers:
Melissa de Villiers is a writer and journalist. She grew up in South Africa but now lives between Singapore and London. She is working on her first book, a collection of stories.