Notes on the Writing of A Bend in the Road

The writing of this novel presented a challenge because of the varying narrative voices. Part of the novel was written in first person, part in third person. Unlike The Notebook or A Walk to Remember -- where the third person narrative was sandwiched between two first person narratives -- this story required that I blend the first and third person voices into one coherent story throughout the novel. This was made even more difficult by two factors: there were two different time periods (present-day, and 1988), and for a vast part of the novel, the first person narrator had to remain unknown. But because the first-person narrator had to remain unknown, I was limited in what I could write so as not to give the identity away, yet he had to move both stories (the present-day one and the character's one in 1988) forward as well. And then, to top it off, and to make it even more challenging: At the proper moment, the two narrative voices and the two time periods merged into a single story. It goes without saying that the merger had to be seamless and natural, largely unnoticed by the reader.

The novel had to be structured this way to provide the necessary conflict between the Miles and Sarah. Love stories require conflict (something to keep the couple apart) but because of the originality requirement of the genre, I couldn't use anything I'd used in previous novels. Those conflicts had included, engagement, sickness, inability to move past grief, death, and inability to commit. (The easiest conflict, by the way, is to have one or both of the characters married to other people, but adultery goes against my morals and I refuse to write it).

The conflict in this story that kept the characters apart was an incident that happened in the past.

Without giving anything away about the plot, when I finished the novel and cut 25% (in which the writing proceeded relatively smoothly, if a bit verbose at times) I sent it up to my editor and we spoke on the phone. "It's great," she said, "Everything's here. It's just in the wrong order." She was talking about the first person narratives. They weren't seamless enough, so I edited the novel and sent another draft. Still not right, so I sent another. Then another.

I finally got them in the right order, but by then, another problem had developed. Once the stories had merged, once the narrative voices had merged, once the time frames had merged (if you can't follow this, you have to read the book) I didn't know which voice to use: first person or third. So I rewrote entire scenes to change the voices and sent another draft up. Then another. Then another.

All in all, seven drafts, though the changes were largely those of cutting and pasting, and changing narrative voices in various scenes. Overall, it was a very challenging editing process.