Introduction Progression
“It is no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up in need of major surgery. This is common in all writing and among the best of writers.”
I love this E.B. White quote. So often, I imagine my favorite writers—John Green, Kelly Corrigan, Jane Austen among them—producing fully formed and polished first drafts, and it’s always nice to be reminded that is never the actual case.
If the words that gave us Charlotte and Wilbur and Fern needed major surgery—cutting and splicing and rearranging—well, then, my own need for revision is in good company, yes?
Sometimes it’s hard to know what that looks like though, so I thought I’d give you a peek inside a piece I recently operated on.
In my recent Coffee + Crumbs essay, “Ode to a Color-Coded Calendar,” it took me a bunch of tries to get the introduction right. Below you’ll see all the various iterations with a few explanations of my thought process and a few suggestions from Cara Stolen, who helped me edit this piece.
I hope this behind-the-scenes look is another helpful reminder that no one gets it exactly right on the first try!
April 6
10:19 a.m.
This was my first draft, and I knew this wasn’t right yet when I typed it. The details weren’t fully formed; the scene needed some meat added on to it. But, I needed to just get the rest of my words out, so I included the key pieces here and made a mental note to come back on my second pass through to round them out and strengthen the introduction:
It’s mid-morning when I sit down at my kitchen table with my various supplies. The sun streams in through the window to my right and my 3-year-old pushes a tractor toward a play apple tree next to me.
I straighten everything in front of me: my cell phone, five fine-tipped dry erase markers, and my white board calendar which has been wiped clean. It’s April 1st, and I’ve got schedules to organize.
April 12
1:15 p.m.
When I came back to strengthen the introduction, I had this idea to insert an actual ode at the beginning and then weave some of that language into the introduction and also call back to it in the conclusion. I thought it would be funny in a sort of hyperbolic way—writing about my calendar as someone else had written about the sun—but I just couldn’t get it to land right:
Whene’er thou shinest bright,
And show thy brilliant light,
The cares I know each day
Silently steal away.
from “Ode to the Sun” by Eloise Bibb Thompson
The sun shines bright through my kitchen window, and I sit down at the table, splaying a handful of supplies in the brilliant light. My three-year-old pushes a tractor toward a plastic apple tree next to me. I straighten everything in front of me: It’s mid-morning when I sit down at my kitchen table with my various supplies. The sun streams in through the window to my right and my 3-year-old pushes a tractor toward a plastic apple tree nearby.
I straighten everything in front of me: my cell ipPhone, five fine-tipped dry erase markers, and my white board calendar which has been wiped clean. —shiny and bright in its own way. It’s April 1st, and I’ve got schedules to organize.
It’s the first of the month. I have schedules to organize.
April 13
2:35 p.m.
I knew I wanted to include the sunshine in this opening scene because it really was so warm and lovely, shining through the window as I sat there, so I scrapped the Eloise Bibb Thompson ode and built this next version around the sunshine, knowing I wanted to end on those two last two beats: “It’s the first of the month. I have schedules to organize.”
Whene’er thou shinest bright,
And show thy brilliant light,
The cares I know each day
Silently steal away.
from “Ode to the Sun” by Eloise Bibb Thompson
The sun shines bright through my kitchen window, and I sit down at the table, splaying a handful of supplies in the brilliant lines of its light. My three-year-old pushes a tractor toward a plastic apple tree next to me. I straighten everything in front of me: my iPhone, five fine-tipped dry erase markers, and my white board calendar which has been wiped clean—shiny and bright in its own way.
It’s the first of the month. I have schedules to organize.
April 19
1:25 p.m.
I sent the previous version to Cara Stolen for a second set of eyes, and she suggested making the introduction clearer and more concise. I added in some movement to put me at the table, but really this version isn’t that much different than the previous:
My hands are full on the short walk from one side of my kitchen to the other. I pass my three-year-old—deep in pretend play with a tractor and a plastic apple tree—on the way to the head of our oval table. The sun shines brightly through the window to my right, and I empty my hands into the warm streams of its light. Splayed in front of me are my iPhone, four fine-tipped dry-erase markers, my white board calendar, and an iced coffee with sweet cream for good measure.
It’s the first of the month. I have schedules to organize.
April 20
8:13 p.m.
I sent it back to Cara who said it still wasn’t there yet—specifically she wanted the first sentence to be stronger. “What if you’re grabbing the calendar off the wall in that first sentence? Or wiping it clean?” she suggested.
Just before I rewrote this final version, I sent Cara the following two texts in rapid succession:
“Why is the beginning of this essay so hard???” (7:45 p.m.)
“Okay wait I may be onto something please hold” (7:52 p.m.)
A few minutes later, she helped me tweak the cadence of the first sentence and then she texted back, “THERE IT IS” at 8:15 p.m.
Here’s where the introduction finally landed:
The warm, morning sun shines brightly through my window, illuminating the freshly wiped white board calendar in front of me, and, at this moment, I wonder if I have ever seen a more beautiful sight.
My three-year-old son sits near me at the kitchen table—deep in pretend play with a tractor and a plastic apple tree. I watch as he fills the tractor up with apples—a trick of a hidden magnet—before I turn my attention back to my own task at hand. Surrounding the calendar, I have assembled a handful of supplies: my iPhone, four fine-tipped dry-erase markers, and an iced coffee with sweet cream for good measure.
It’s the first of the month. I have schedules to organize.