Wiser than I: My Boy to the Rescue

For six months, maybe more, I've been at work on a book that has been in my head for a very long time. It's that novel for adults from which I sometimes post excerpts, this strange collision of place, purpose, mood that I selfishly sit with when friends should be called, when grander responsibilities beckon, when I should be cracking the spine on the recipe book to spice up the meals around here. But I can't let it go.

Yesterday I printed the novel's first 150 pages and sat down to read on the deck. Nothing we write is ever what we think we have written—at least it is that way for me. So that, despite the fact that I'd worked these pages through at least two dozen drafts, had already tossed multiple subplots, had trashed a few favorite symbols, had thrashed myself over rhythm and line, I still did not know what I had. I still did not realize that I was up against a pacing dilemma. Twenty pages in, out on my deck, I did.

For the next several hours I was a frustrated writer, shuffling my deck, black Xing through pages I'd loved, shuffling the deck again. I was rewriting, resketching, rethinking, and finally, I called out to my son, whose work, as I have often said, is cleaner and brighter than my own.

"Jeremy," I said, "just take a look at this first page please. Would it interest you if you found it in a bookstore? Would you care enough to read on?"

He studied that page. He scratched the back of his sweet head. He sat down and pulled me to him.

"You want to know what I think?" he asked.

"I do," I said. "I promise."

"You want suspense, I imagine, and tension, right?"

"That's what I want," I nodded.

"Then take the fourth line. Make it the first line. Break the third paragraph right here." He drew a line with his thin finger.

I considered his suggestion. I flipped things in my mind. I went to my computer, typed it all newly in.

"Hey," I called to him when I was done. "Will you look at this?"

He got up, left the room where his music was playing. He came around to my silence, stood by my shoulder, leaned in, read. "That works," he said. "That does it."

And the thing is that it did.