The beginning of anything I write is the most difficult part. I think I
did fourteen or twenty of the first chapter of Hunter's Horn. And I
didn't do that many of The Dollmaker, but I must have done five or six.
First, for The Dollmaker, I wrote showing Gertie at home. She was either
plowing to put in a turnip patch, or perhaps
Page 98 she
was gathering corn. And the baby was sick; and Clytie was watching him,
running out to tell Gertie, and Gertie grew more and more worried. And
[unknown] at last Clytie ran out to tell Gertie that
Amos wasn't breathing right; she thought he was choking to death. So
Gertie dropped everything—I don't think she changed clothing—got on the
mule, didn't ride like a lady in a side saddle, but I think she was
astride a mule, grabbed up Amos and headed for the nearest doctor seven
or eight miles away. And she knew she couldn't get there soon enough on
the mule; she stopped a car. And I realized all that first part was
extraneous, because after she got home I would show her in the home; the
character would develop. [unknown] I think all that with
her working and her getting ready to take Amos, or just grabbing him up,
was, oh, about seventy-five typed pages; I've forgotten. I just whacked
it all off. The most I do in a rewrite is cut, and still my books have
too many details. And, I suppose, too many adjectives and adverbs,
though I go through on my last draft, and sometimes in the final draft
I'll come upon an adjective I think is useless, unneeded, so I whack it
out. And adverbs I try to avoid, especially in conversation. I've had
students who would write things such as "He angrily said" or "She
happily said." Well, I tell them—I feel that way about myself—that the
reader should be able to tell from the conversation whether or not the
person is angry, happy, or "She spoke sorrowfully" and all those. When I
began writing I'd stick them in, but I at least had sense enough to cut
them out,
Page 99 because I think the reader is able to
tell from the conversation without all those things. So usually I just
use "said" if anything is necessary, though I think in good writing you
don't even need that a lot of the time. The reader can tell who
spoke.