The difference between draft 1 and draft 12ish of “Love Is Never Still”

I thought it might be interesting to look at a passage from my most recent story, “Love Is Never Still,” as it existed in the first and last drafts. By the time I actually publish a story, I’ve often forgotten what the first draft looked like exactly.

Stages of drawing Galatea. Based on this painting.

When I sat down to write “Love Is Never Still,” I did it in one unrevised chunk, so I actually have the text I wrote as I wrote it. It is, as I sometimes warn my beta readers, “hot off the brain presses.”

Draft one:

The Sculptor

I should not have wished her living, that lithe creature whose limbs I had freed from their marble enclosures, whose rounds and slopes had shaped beneath my chisel. She was delicately colored, like the palest of women, and when I ran my hand across the plump of her arm, she was smooth and cold.

I thought that, if she were only flesh, we could embrace. I had wanted her that way through every moment of carving. When I put down the tools and regarded those around me, I saw scars and poxes, rotting teeth, and all the other innumerable perfections nature works on even the most fit bodies. I knew I was sculpting perfection that no woman could match who was borne through flesh and not through stone.

A man may design many things in his life—his home, his career, his presence in the world. Yet men are denied the greatest challenge of all, to create the embodiment of his desire.

With every chip, I imagined the woman she would be. Not only the striking features of her face, but the way she would see me, her literal maker, with awe and humility and measureless gratitude. I would be all to her, god and husband, as Zeus and Apollo and the others are to their mortal wives.

Galatea was flawless to my eye. And if, later, I discovered she was flawed, it was I who had to answer for it.

I prayed for her life, and Aphrodite granted it. They say the goddess of love is warm-hearted, but I have not found her to be kind.

Draft twelve of the first section (the draft which appears in Uncanny Magazine):

The Sculptor

Through every moment of carving, I want her as one wants a woman. I want this lithe creature whose limbs I’ve freed from their ivory enclosures, whose rounds and slopes are discovering their shapes beneath my chisel. She is delicately colored like the palest of women, and when I run my fingers across the plump of her arm, she is smooth and cold.

When necessity requires I set down my tools and leave my estate, all I see are marked bodies. Cooks and merchants, sailors and slaves, rich men and prostitutes—all wear scars and wrinkles and poxes and rotting teeth.

I am sculpting perfection no woman born from mortal flesh can match. I lift my hands to her bosom. Her ivory is soft beneath my palms. I fear I would bruise her if I pressed too eagerly.

Thoughts:

• Draft 1 is surprisingly cogent, which is probably because this is the first section. The later stuff, written as I was getting fatigued, is likely much less coherent.
• Also, the first couple paragraphs were originally a poem I was trying to write, so I did work on the words there (although they had line breaks in).
• There are a lot of ideas in draft one and they bounce around too fast from one subject to another. I have a tendency to do this. It shows up especially in my poetry where I have trouble slowing down to unpack a single image. It shows up in my first prose drafts, too, and I have to put in some effort to bat it back. I remember what Marilynne Robinson told me: that it’s okay to be slow, and try to let each moment be itself.
• Although it appears I cut a huge amount, I actually displaced a lot of it. The final draft has a version of the first two paragraphs from the original. The third, fifth, and sixth were shuffled down to later places in the story where they would work better. The only paragraph that went entirely is the fourth, in which the sculptor fantasizes about being godlike, because that wasn’t the character I eventually ended up writing. The sculptor who pictures himself as a god and Galatea as a supplicant is nakedly ambitious and exploitative in a way the sculptor in the story is not.
• Related to the fact that I had a lot of ideas bouncing around, I note that the original draft is long on shiny abstract statements and short on images and movements. That’s why the paragraphs could be detached and placed elsewhere so easily. They are good emotional turns and character moments to steer the plot and pacing one way or another, but they need anchors so they don’t feel empty.
• And related to both of those, the problem with the hodgepodge of abstract statements is that there’s no coherence to the narrative beneath them. Why does it flow from one paragraph to another in the way it does? The paragraphs aren’t connected terribly; I can see why one thought led to another while I was writing. But it’s better* when you can make the structure underneath a section like that a strong, moving force–something that goes in a straight line instead of circling itself, repeating incidents, themes, or arguments.
• The main fix for all of this was to pare down the number of concepts I was trying to get across to just what needed to be in the first impression of the story–he is carving her, and he is obsessed with her. I gave it a through thread (“I want her, and this is why.”). Then I moved from the abstractions into a physical moment when he moves in to touch her. (The bruise thing is from Ovid – “he fears he then may bruise her by his eager pressing.”) That gives me a physical anchor for moving into Galatea’s point of view. Moving into her perspective so quickly also means that I immediately set up the rhythm of multiple points of view, and establish her perspective as being of equal importance to the sculptor’s.
• There’s a lot of subtler linguistic stuff, cutting words–especially redundancies–and toning down a bit on drama, particularly by cutting that fourth paragraph (“awe and humility and measureless gratitude”–thanks, we get it.). And a lot of reorganizing. My essential philosophy is that prose can be complex and also feel (relatively) easy to read as long as you get it down so that it easily flows from one sentence and concept to the next. I reorganized this piece a *lot* as I revised, particularly because a major component of the revision was attempting to rebalance the strength of the Galatea and Aphrodite arcs.