The Edinburgh Draft
The Writers’ Museum in Edinburgh had stairs that coiled like a spring. Huddled over myself, my overstuffed satchel pressed to my hip, I took the steps down one painful set at a time. My dear friend Jess waited for me at the bottom. It was Sunday, we had our day off from classes, and Jess and I had tea (for me) and coffee (for her) later on.
Located on the Royal Mile, the Writers’ Museum was the most touristy thing that I did in my trip to Scotland. All around me were people speaking Italian, Chinese, French, and German. I was giddy. I do love a good smorgasbord of languages, even if the people speaking them are jostling me from one end of the cobblestoned streets to the other. Call me selfish, but when I visit attractions like the Writers’ Museum, I always fantasize about my desk being in an exhibit someday, even though I am no Robert Burns. I am just a hapless, first-time tourist soaking in the chatter around me.
Blackwell’s, where I found lovely journals.
This was my first time abroad, and I obsessively checked my suitcase for my passport every day when I got home. Sometimes, I went with wonderful friends to pubs. Other times, I stayed in and ordered Mexican food — the guacamole is different from here in New Mexico! — and watched Legally Blonde. I made friends with Cara, who has an infectious laugh, and Majdolin, who kindly listened to my questions about Amman and Arabic and told me about herself and her work as a journalist. I read essays about thrift shopping, novel excerpts about sentient droids, and short stories about environmental crisis and the children who live through them. I wore compression socks on the plane and comfortable shoes in Edinburgh. I grew as a writer.
I am a student at The Johns Hopkins University studying creative writing. I have been thinking a lot about my voice and how it is growing — maybe slowly, maybe not — through the exceptional training that I am receiving. So far, I have not had a bad class or instructor. Like a singer working to hit the high note, I have toiled away at setting, point of view, tone and intention, and integrating a cornucopia of influences and ideas into a succinct and unparalleled sentence in my history of sentences. In Scotland, I took a step in the soggy weather, looked up at the sky puckered with rumbling gray clouds, and realized that I was not standing in the same place that I had been in 2021, when I entered the program with nothing but my shy voice. It was not just the obvious physical distance, but the inner one, the one that counts.
Then there is the question of my novel. As I approach my final days with this work, Canis Major, before I attempt the querying process, I created one last outline for what I am calling my “Edinburgh draft.” This is actually my second and a half draft. I have made a great deal of changes, slicing out all the chapters that proceed the main conflict, developing Erwilian as a character, and shifting the middle of the story from a linear narrative to a modular one. It is indeed something of a new endeavor to have three parts to Canis Major. Only now do I know how important the backstory is for the events of the novel.
My hotel room had a small tea station, where I naturally had to pose with my Edinburgh draft.
Canis Major is an adult fantasy with a younger protagonist for a good chunk of the story. That has not changed from the first draft to the Edinburgh draft, but I have grown a bit more excited to try and pull it off. My wee book has been influenced by everything from Tales of the Arabian Nights to White Oleander. I took an independent study last semester for a different novel, Project Novocaine, where I learned more than any other course how to pick and choose the works that will inspire me, and I have done my best to trundle those skills along with me toward Canis Major.
Today, I am making a cup of tea, sitting down to work on a short story that I wrote for the residency called “Manifest Destiny,” and will make some inroads to my Edinburgh draft. I have a new scene in mind for a character by the name of Cuyamungue. I will listen to some Booktube, then I will vacuum, reclaiming for myself a certain domesticity.
My next travel destination will either be Salamanca, Spain, where I intend to go to research for Project Novocaine. Or, if only, Iceland. No matter where I go, my passport is ready, and I am ready, and I know which journals to take, and I know which pens to take, and the horizon is mine.
