Working Draft

Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week Series

by Rosiee Thor

Draft 1: I stumble through the motions of a story told poorly. It is flimsy framework, a bare beginning most of which I will tear down and rebuild. But it is written, and it is done.

No one kisses anyone in this draft. I know I’ll have to change that, because everyone tells me teens only read YA for the romance–“If they can’t ship it, they’ll skip it.” Was I not a teen once too? Who will write for the girl I was, who lied about crushes at slumber parties and danced alone in the bathroom at prom? I knew, even then I was different, but still I don’t know exactly how. So I put that girl in a corner along with this draft. This draft is for her. The next one won’t be.

Draft 2: I change everything but the opening line. It is like a funhouse mirror version of draft one, it’s like the loopy text they make you replicate to prove you’re not a robot. It barely resembles a story, with whole pieces carved away and filled with something that does not match the rest. It’s a patchwork of new ideas.

Still, there is no kissing, but there is a sexually aggressive villain who embodies everything I fear. Because that is what the stories I’ve read have taught me must be present in order to show my main character is strong.

Draft 3: Finally, this story resembles a book. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end. They match each other well enough, but still I know, given a magnifying glass, a reader will see the places I’ve sloppily glued the pieces together.

They will see how this kiss has no business in chapter seven. They will see I have placed a boy and girl beside each other like dominoes spaced too far apart, expecting Newton’s laws to do my work for me, surprised when they don’t both fall. They will see how I’ve copied and pasted the world onto my characters’ lips because I don’t know how it’s supposed to feel, because the way it feels to me isn’t what I’ve been told people want to read.

Draft 4: Everything is smoother now. Chapters no longer feel jammed together like uncomplimentary pieces of a puzzle. Sometimes I even let myself like a line here or there, as if someone else has written them and I’m allowed to enjoy them.

And still there is this kissing scene where I have thrown a boy at a girl, a mimicry of the world around me. It is unnatural, unearned. I think I know it, but I second guess myself. I erase it and rewrite the same scene over it word for word because I still don’t know what a romance is supposed to read like. I don’t know if I hate it because I’ve done it wrong, or if I hate it because somehow I am wrong.

Draft 5: I think, perhaps, it is the couple. I’ve paired them wrong, I’ve given them a relationship they would never choose for themselves. I reassess, and a girl made of pink lace and stars pours out of my fingers. I try out the word bisexual–first on the page, then out loud. It feels better. It feels closer. My characters begin to thrive under this new label, but I know I haven’t completely found myself yet.

The kissing scene remains untouched. Because it is the only way I know how to show bisexuality, to show her kiss a boy but fall in love with a girl. I hate it because I know that’s bullshit. I hate it because I know I’m bullshitting.

Draft 6: Is it really a draft if I change nothing but grammar? I know it’s not. I finally let someone else read it, someone I don’t know if I trust. I am scared because I worry she’ll see past this pretense of a romance I’ve written. I worry she’ll see me.

Instead, she tells me to rethink my villain. She’s right and I know it. Still, I keep him because I don’t know how to write a romantic happily ever after. I am afraid to write another kiss, even if this one is earned, even if this one is right. I don’t send her the rest.

Draft 7: I can’t ignore the problem with my villain anymore. I’ve been chosen for PitchWars and my mentor isn’t going to let me slide by on excuses. She tells me I have to cut him, and I cry because it feels like the only part of this story that’s part of me. But she’s right. I am too tied up in trauma to be truthful.

I rewrite the book from scratch, unravelling all the places of the narrative he’s touched. I write over the kissing scene, washing away this piece of a story I never wanted to tell, but still the nameless voices echo in my mind, telling me I must write a romance between a boy and a girl. So I become a magician, making romantic tension out of nothing.

Draft 8: My mentor tells me I’ve done it wrong. I am gutted. But I am not surprised. I have to write it all over again, and I have to do it in 16 days. I am exhausted. I do not sleep, I barely eat, I write the climax in a Quiznos on the way home from Seattle at 9pm. I finish the book at 2am and send it to my mentor.

But I like it. For the first time, I feel like even if I’ve failed again, even if this draft isn’t the one, at least it feels like me. Because this time, I ask if I have to write the m/f romance. I tell my mentor it just doesn’t feel natural, that Nathaniel wouldn’t want it even if maybe Anna might. And my mentor gives me permission to try without. She mentions the word asexual, and though I’ve heard the word before, something inside me reaches for it. It is a deep feeling, like it’s buried under a mountain of propaganda society has piled on me. I don’t know if this word belongs to me, but I take joy in erasing every ounce of this contrived romance, making room for the other to blossom, letting the word asexual fill in the spaces left behind.

Draft 9: When my agent signs me for this book, I know she’s seen that I queried it as #ownvoices for bisexuality. I know this isn’t true, but I don’t think it’s exactly a lie either. I know I feel the same for all genders, and that’s what it means, right? But still I waver on it. I wonder if she will pitch it to editors that way. I know she will unless I tell her the truth.

I learn the word aromantic and feel safe for the first time. The word asexual was a piece, but it was not the whole. Now I have them both, one carried in each hand as a type. I write Nathaniel as aromantic and asexual deliberately, this time. I don’t include the words, because I am afraid. I am afraid if I do, I will be told no. I’m afraid if I do, someone will recognize them in me and I’m not ready yet.

Draft 10: One of the first things my editor asks me on our call is what each of my characters’ sexualities are. He wants me to define them more clearly in the text. And because I’ve spent 6 months on sub being anxious and doing anything but write, I know the words, and I’m ready to claim them. I do so on the phone. I tell him Nathaniel is Aro/Ace… like me. He says he wants more of it on the page.

I write Nathaniel’s coming out scene that night. I use the words.

Draft 11: We’re getting close, I’m told. It’s almost done. Just a few more tweaks here and there. It’s time to write a new kissing scene–between different characters, in a different chapter, after an entire book building the foundation for them. I know it will be better this time, but still I am afraid. I write they words, “they kissed,” and leave them there, undeveloped this time instead of unearned. I realize I am not afraid to write this kiss; I am afraid that if I do it and do it well it will mean these words I carry in my fists aren’t mine to hold. I worry if I celebrate this queerness it will make my own less valid. But these fears are of my own making, and no one else can decide who I am.

As I reread this draft a final time, I dread the queasiness I used to feel reading the old kissing scene. I am nervous in a way I haven’t been in a long time, afraid I won’t connect to my own words. But when I read, I don’t cringe. I don’t look at my screen through the slits of my fingers. I read Nathaniel coming out, getting to claim his identity, and I read the new kiss. It makes me smile, because there I am, and there they are, and there we are. Because I did it, I wrote it, and I love it.

I finally see the arc jacket wrap for my book. My editor tells me they made a few changes to the jacket copy because they “want to draw attention to the fact that this is a story about queer characters.” I never in my life thought anyone would want to highlight that about my book. I was told over and over again that queer stories don’t sell, that aromantic stories don’t sell. I thought if my book sold it would be in spite of its queerness, in spite of my own identity, but here my publisher is telling me different. This gives me hope, because it means yes, our stories can sell; yes, our stories are wanted; and yes, our stories matter.

I don’t get another draft, and perhaps that’s okay because finally I am at peace with my own words. I think it’s true that authors will revise forever until publishing forces them to stop, and I wonder just a little bit what my draft 12 might look like or draft 13. What pieces of my identity will I uncover next? How will I learn to understand my aromanticism and how might they change the way I see this story? Sexuality is fluid. Mine will always be a working draft, and though I may not get to change this story anymore, I do get to write the next one.

—

TARNISHED ARE THE STARS

A secret beats inside Anna Thatcher’s chest: An illegal clockwork heart. Anna works cog by cog — donning the moniker Technician — to supply black market medical technology to the sick and injured, against the Commissioner’s tyrannical laws.

Nathaniel Fremont, the Commissioner’s son, has never had to fear the law. Determined to earn his father’s respect, Nathaniel sets out to capture the Technician. But the more he learns about the outlaw, the more he questions whether his father’s elusive affection is worth chasing at all.

Their game of cat and mouse takes an abrupt turn when Eliza, a skilled assassin and spy, arrives. Her mission is to learn the Commissioner’s secrets at any cost — even if it means betraying her own heart.

When these uneasy allies discover the most dangerous secret of all, they must work together despite their differences and put an end to a deadly epidemic — before the Commissioner ends them first.

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