Kyle Kerr

Time For A Change

08/13/07 | My Writings | 0 Comments

For those of you who haven’t read about it in my About Me section, I started writing my novel in 10th grade.  My English teacher asked us to do a writing exercise, to write out a couple examples of what makes a great opening for a novel.  Stuff like “I couldn’t remember how the pen got stuck in my eye…” and “They didn’t know if they would make it to the hospital in time…” I know.  It’s a real loss that I didn’t pursue those, right?  Well, then I wrote something about a character contemplating suicide, and that really intrigued me.  Why would he be having these thoughts?  So, I started to dig, and ultimately began work on a novel without even realizing it.

What I started then and what I have now are, thankfully, nothing alike.  (Never bothering to plot out the novel had the unforeseen side effect of me having to rewrite the whole thing twice.) I began work on the novel with its current plot in 12th grade, and finished it my second year of college.  Now, two more years later, I find that I’m unhappy with it.

I’ve actually been unhappy with it for a while now, though I was too scared/nervous to do anything about it.  The novel was finished, wasn’t it?  There was a beginning, middle and end, interesting characters, conflict, love, friendship, murder… all the things for a great novel, right?  Well, yes, but something was missing.

Something kept nagging at the back of my mind all those years.  One of the people I asked to read my novel when it was first finished was my 11th grade English teacher, someone who I trusted for her brutal honesty.  Her first comment on the piece?  It was juvenile.  Juvenile? What the hell does that mean?  Well, through an unfortunate set of circumstances, I never got to find out, so that comment was stuck in my head without any explanation.

Now, two years and a lot more writing experience under my belt, I finally realized what she was talking about.  But I was still scared to proceed.  The novel’s been locked down for two years already!  I was so used to how everything was that I couldn’t even picture it happening any other way.

Well, not any more.  I’ve decided on a change.  Things are being rewritten, rearranged, and removed or improved.  The first thing to go?  The title.

If you happened to catch it, the title of the novel used to be A Life, Less Living.  It was referencing a line of dialogue from one of the characters, Becky:

Like I said before, he was basically a life, less living; he was already dead, and you would have thought he was if you had seen him there.

Okay, not the best bit of writing I’ve ever done, but that’s where the title originated from.  It refers to the main character, Simon, after seeing his partner Damen dead for the first time.

However, the title was always obscure, and more than one person asked me what it meant.  Great, I thought, they’re curious!  Read the book to find out!  Well, I’ve found out that people don’t waste their time with things they don’t understand, so the title was actually a hindrance.

To get the ball rolling (physically on the page as well as mentally for me), the title has become A Song of Sad Lamentation.  There actually is a poem in the novel that the title refers to, but this time you really ARE going to have to read the novel to see it!

And so, a major rearrangement has already taken place, the first chapter has been rewritten (check it out here), and I am going through the rest of the novel as we speak.

What prompted this sudden urge to make changes/improvements?  I had an agent request some samples… More to come on that later, though.

Until next…

Kyle W. Kerr