Hello from Maryland. If you’re fascinated by the creative process, this post is for you. I’m definitely process-obsessed. When I used to rent DVDs from Blockbuster,1 sometimes the extras at the end were the best part. Those behind the scenes interviews with the screenwriter, director, costume designer, special effects crew, stars, location scout—I watched it all.
Today goes behind the scenes of writing the original short story, “Heartwood,” which you can read here. For the research behind it, read here.
A few years back, I took
’s excellent Revisions course. I’m so glad I did. My MFA had many craft workshops and I certainly revised a lot, but there wasn’t a dedicated workshop for it. Odd, considering that’s by far the bulk of writing—especially fiction. Armed with what I learned from Sonal, I’ve workshopped this story over the past year three times with seven different readers in two groups and revised it seven times. Here’s a taste of that process.First draft
Since the story involved a conflict between longtime neighbors, I first tried a mash-up with Romeo and Juliet. The kids of the two families fall in love and tragedy ensues. Some notes from that time:
Could it be weirder?2 Rather than 2 people falling in love, could it be a person and a tree? Like the fairy tale of the woman who married a bear. The girl who married a tree? Like, actually marries.
Do I include POV of the tree’s spirit? Does it have a gender? How weird can it be? How “other”? Like the alien in Stranger in a Strange Land—everything is defamiliarized.
Sap + blood mingle in ceremony to pledge devotion and loyalty.
I was also curious about the tree’s temperament. Generous? Moody? Kind? Cranky? Sassy? Loving? And about other beings that live in the tree possibly weighing in as well. And what role the fungal network might play, possibly as a Greek chorus commenting on the action or characters. This question wanted exploration: Is it possible to write this without centering humans?
Sorry, maple tree. For this first pass, I played it safe and wrote a close third POV with the girl, Sam. It opened with a courtroom scene, then moved to the woods and to the scene where Sam marries Ace. It ends on the morning of the cutting with chainsaws revving up as Sam cowers in the kitchen eating a piece of toast spread with maple syrup and hating herself. I did not have the stomach to write further.
One of the best things about writing workshop is that readers note which phrases and images are working, and which passages pull them out of the story. In my groups, we write loglines for each other, a movie-promo digest of what the story is about. This is so valuable, because I’m often too close with trying to write a story, that I can’t see what it is doing on the page. In early drafts, what shows up can be quite different than my original intentions—which is a good thing. As a writing teacher used to say, The story is smarter than you are.
One workshop reader asked, “What if Sam took a more active role?” They encouraged a stronger ending: “You wrote such a beautiful call-to-action story that I wanted an ending that allowed me to release this energy that you have conjured up.” When all four of them questioned whether the courtroom scene was even necessary (a scene I sweated over), it became easier to cut. A short story is like a snow globe. You can only fit so much into it.
The upshot of this workshop was to find the story that wants to be told. As one reader said:
“For me the story sits down with Sam and Ace. There is a genuineness in their dialogue that goes a long way to make the larger points you are making. If this story focused on Sam’s love of Ace and the trees what would it look like?”
Second draft
Time to break out my toolkit from Sonal Champsee’s revision workshop. I started with the questions, What is the heart of the story? Why this story, why now? And I used screenwriter Blake Snyder’s “Beat Sheet” from Save the Cat to pull out the plot points and better shape the story.3
The biggest change was heeding Sonal’s challenge to try something wild: What’s the worst that could happen? So I went bold and rewrote the whole thing from the tree’s POV. Rather than the worst, the best happened. Ace’s personality emerged on the page, including his (her?) cranky mother’s phrases like, “Not a Maple trait.”
This version begins, “When Samantha was a child, she watched the trees hold up the sky. She would lie on her back on a clear afternoon among the Maples.” That child’s observation to her mother at my state park’s maple syrup day had found its way into the story.4
Two months later, I submitted to my workshop again. They all agreed it was more direct, better focused with clearer stakes. “There are moments in here, too, where I do feel a very real emotion, which is no easy feat for a story narrated by a tree.”
But the POV hadn’t quite settled down. Maybe it should still be Sam in close third? “While I admit that it would take quite a bit away from the cutting scene [at the end], I’m wondering how much we can connect with a tree as narrator.” Questions like this challenged me to clarify and recommit to the story’s purpose.
Another reader wanted me to go deeper with Ace: “For a tree, he was filled with emotion, but I’m wondering if he has more to share? How did he feel during the last sugaring season? What messages did he pass to his family members?” Everyone picked up on the generational continuity in the story, between the women in Sam’s family and between the trees. It’s helpful when readers point out latent elements for improvement, as I can’t always see clearly.
To this reader, Ace seemed less connected to the other trees than to Sam and her grandmother: “I wonder about Ace’s connection to the walking people, and if it is unusual for a tree.” This sparked an exploration of another source of tension between Ace and his/her mother, and a more intentional character arc for Ace. My confusion about Ace’s gender led to further research into maple trees, where I discovered to my delight that some of them are dioecious, producing both male and female flowers. Some can even switch genders. So, for the third draft, Ace became a gender-neutral “they.”
Third draft
Here, I expanded Ace’s death scene, in a passage modeled on Tobias Wolff’s brilliant 1995 story, “Bullet in the Brain."5 I was still so reluctant to kill off a beloved character that I wrote it in close-third, rather than the first person of the rest of the story. Fortunately, my workshop group busted me.
I had also made the choice to remove the hopeful “coda” from the second draft’s ending and leave it at Thank you. Thank you. Mostly because I didn’t know who would be narrating at that point, since Ace was now gone. The upshot of our workshop was, I can do whatever I want with my story. Who is to say that Ace’s spirit isn’t still around to keep narrating? On a practical level, Sam and Kevin step up to repair the damage and we need to see that to have hope for the next generation.
A reader of the final version here on Substack questioned whether the coda is necessary. They suggested ending on Thank you. Thank you. To that reader, I say, I feel you.
Later drafts, polish, and publish
I obsessed about the straight line on the map comment from one of the many videos I’d seen during my research. For the fourth draft, the opener came from that image of abstract lines imposed on land that is anything but straight. I wasn’t sure if it would work since it’s a more omniscient POV. I submitted this version to my other writing workshop for fresh eyes. The consensus was, after some polishing, this was ready to submit! We kicked around title ideas. (Titling is not my strong suit.) One of my readers suggested “Heartwood,” which we all agreed captured it well.
Being I’m addicted to the near-instant gratification of Substack, I decided to serialize it here. Thankfully,
advised me not to cut this story into seven parts (what was I thinking?). And not to space it out weekly, but to publish as a special event over ten days. The four parts worked well enough for Substack-length posts as an experiment.6Inspired by
, I asked Gemini AI to summarize the sections as I serialized. In the very first session, Gemini suggested “In the Heartwood” as a title—uncanny. I also discovered just how sycophantic AI can be: “Your excerpt evokes Brian Doyle’s lyrical realism, particularly the grounding of spiritual moments in nature.” Oh, do say more, Gemini! 😂What’s your process?
Are you in a writing workshop? How many drafts does it take you to complete an essay or a story? Full disclosure, my essays do not go through such a rigorous process. Although I did workshop the post, Community Turtle, when I didn’t have any fiction ready to share.
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Dating myself and I’m okay with it. Vintage is cool again.
This question has rattled around my head since hearing it on a podcast years ago. A writing teacher said she (he?) uses it to challenge students out of their timidity.
Sonal stressed that this isn’t meant as a template to force a story into a certain rigid structure. She encouraged us to use it as a lens on what’s present, to move parts of the story around, to test for impact. I’ve never used it for a first draft, preferring instead to let the words follow my curiosity.
Read it here, if you have a New Yorker account.
That’s a lot of evolution for one story! It’s hard to imagine anything other than the tree as narrator for this story. It seems so etched in stone, it’s surprising that it didn’t start out that way. I bet in your MFA workshop someone would have had an issue with anthropomorphism/personification — or has that fallen by the wayside now?
Let’s hear it for drafting with pen and paper - it’s the only way I can think or get deeply into the world of my story.
What a privilege to be permitted into the revision process, the evolution of a story. Few good stories are simply written but draw the writer's emotion and tangles that need time and decoding. Drafts later, an author understands what the story wanted to share. Stories, it feels, know more than the writer does sometimes.
Yes, to the comment, "...too close with trying to write a story, that I can't see what it is doing on the page." Writing is lonely. Readers are precious.