New knee, old book
or, why you have to rebuild what's broken
If you’ve seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding (and who hasn’t), you’ll remember a scene where all the Greek people spit on a baby. One by one, they spit as the baby (at least I think it’s a baby) files past. It’s played for laughs—the strange primitive behavior of the “exotic” culture.
Greeks don’t actually do this.
What Greeks do do is say the onomatopoetic word “ftou” as a stylized spit. Why? To fool the evil eye into thinking that what they love (the aforementioned baby) is actually so disgusting that they spit on it. That way the evil eye itself won’t curse it, seeing as it’s already cursed.
I mean, isn’t that obvious!?
So, it’s with a complete awareness of my heritage and my obeisance to the all-powerful evil eye that I say now: ftou ftou ftou!1
Because I’m saying out loud to you that my knee-that-has-no-meniscus, my knee-that-is-bone-on-bone-and-scheduled-for-surgery—that knee is weirdly (ftou ftou) feeling not bad at all. Not bad at all as I run (at an extremely slow ticking-it-along pace) up and down trails in the spectacular Timfi massif where, as luck would have it, my ancestors settled in the village of Papingo many generations ago. Maybe it’s a bit of borrowed connection to the land, or maybe it’s the fresh air, or maybe it’s the spring water that runs into the village plumbing. But something is making me actually able to move without too much discomfort in the mountains.
Having said this, though, I’m very aware that I only need this knee to stay decent for three more weeks. Three weeks from today, I’m going to undergo a process of rebuilding that very knee. Part of my knee will be removed, and new parts installed, along with something that will function like a new meniscus. I’ll be back on my feet that same day, and then I’ll begin the second phase of rebuilding: physical therapy and mobility exercises to get me back to 100%.
Rebuilding is ok. Rebuilding is, however, also scary.2
You never know what other troubles will come to the surface once you begin dismantling what’s broken. You never know how big the job of rebuilding will in truth become. You never know for sure whether what you put back together will be better than the imperfect-but-complete thing you had before.
If it sounds like I’m talking about more than a knee, that’s because I am. I’m talking about novels.
In the three weeks remaining before my knee gets rebuilt, I also plan to set a few days sort of aside from work on Galiot Press to revisit a novel manuscript that’s been sitting in my inventory since I wrote it ten years ago. I’ve looked at the thing maybe once or twice in the intervening years, and I’ve certainly thought about it off and on. This manuscript is the one that got away. The one whose characters still feel to me like real people I want to spend more time with. It’s the book my agent and I probably sent out into the world too soon, the book that turned into a boomerang and fluttered back to me instead of going out to readers.
I can’t just revise the book. It has thematic problems that arise from faulty logistics; it has a problem of historical period; it has a structural weakness. I have to rewrite it. I have to rebuild it. From scratch.
But even as I type those words, the resistance in my brain is strong. It’s the same with my knee. I went out for a run the other day and forgot to put my knee brace on (!), and part of me thought, hey, maybe I don’t need this surgery after all, maybe I’m fine the way I am! Right? Right?!
I don’t want to break my book apart. I don’t want to open up a Scrivener project and start typing new words. (In fact, if I’m really intent to rebuild this book, I need to start the way I start all my first drafts: in pen, by hand, in a notebook.) Still, oh, how I want to open that Scrivener project and create individual chapter folders and copy/paste into those folders the chunks of prose I’ve already written and that I think are just great!
I shouldn’t. Not if I’m really rebuilding. I can’t.
Or can I? Come on, can’t I? Can’t I preserve all the good writing, all the great scenes, the gems of prose? Do I really have to jettison them with the goal of making something better? Seriously, it’s painful to contemplate finding a new starting point altogether, a blank page, for Brigid and George and Delia and Will, for Celestine and Martin. For Katerina.
But wait: Katerina isn’t even in the novel yet. I invented her a few years ago, during a brief visit with the manuscript. Maybe she will be my way forward. Maybe it’s a good sign that I already think of her as part of the original population of my little imagined world.
I need to take some guidance from my knee surgeon here. A partial knee replacement is no delicate thing. I am pretty sure there are scalpels and saws involved. Then there will be a scar, and scar tissue, and stiffness, and muscle weakness. Blech. But the only way out is through—and when I’m rehabbed, my knee will be even better than before.
That’s my plan for this novel. Better than before. But first, the brutal stuff a writer has to go through—except without an anesthetic (well, to each their own). Ftou ftou.
let me pause for a brief ftou ftou because I can’t let the evil eye go unattended as I write
Best of luck on the rebuild. Your a tough lady I have faith you will be back at it in one form or another very soon.
I like the idea of having to re-do a draft without an anesthetic! Lol.
What came to me while reading this, though, is that if you are going to be guided by metaphor, and you're only doing a partial replacement of the meniscus, maybe this time you can write some of it from scratch, but also integrate some really good sections of what came before stuff? This could be a new, hybrid method! ( Just a thought.) But I suppose you will sweep it out with the cobwebs, and start new.
Either way, good luck with the race you guys are about to run, using the "old" meniscus! Even in the current shape, it's probably better than anyone else's, by a mile.