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Bruce shifted his weight indecisively between his two feet.

“You’re looking well,” he managed to mumbled, then wondered why he’d said that.

“Thank you. So do you.”

It was an obvious lie, but as he analyzed it, he noted a trace of something, but it wasn’t malice. If anything, she sounded like the friend she’d always been when they were colleagues.

“Surprised to see you out of your cubicle,” Bruce said. “I remember I was never able to pry you away to a restaurant for a meal.”

She chuckled. “Well, there aren’t any more mortgage payments eating up half my salary, so I finally took your advice and started treating myself to something more than a tuna fish sandwich.”

Bruce smiled as well. He’d never forgotten how natural it had been to talk to her. The two of them had gotten used to calling each other their office spouse, and the whole building had played along, calling them their favorite power couple.

“So what brings you down here, Bruce?” For the first time that he could remember, she sounded guarded while speaking to him, and he finally recognized that what he was picking up in her voice wasn’t malice, but nervousness.

Why would she feel nervous around me?

When he’d first turned to see her, he’d found it hard to meet her eyes. It was embarrassing to be seen by someone who knew him before his fall. Now that he’d spoken to her a little, and saw she was the same woman he’d chat up every Monday through Friday for six years, he felt emboldened to project himself as the person he’d been when he’d still been a valued employee at Hadley.

“Well, you know…I used to own this district,” he said, repeating a line he’d told her often enough in the office, hoping to put her at ease. “it’s been awhile, thought, I’d visit the old stomping grounds.”

That seemed to do it. Despite her efforts, she couldn’t contain her smile.

“Yes,” Miranda said, trying to sound serious. “This place just isn’t the same without you.”

His false sense of bravado was fleeting as they stared at each other in silence. Bruce snuck a few peeks down at his attire, hoping it wasn’t as tattered as he felt it was. His beard started to itch, and he hoped the fleas weren’t visible to her.

The silence between them felt foreign. They’d always been able to strike up a conversation, even if it had been weeks since they’d see each other due to a combination of hectic schedules and vacations. He couldn’t speak for her, but Bruce knew the only reason he’d settled for being her “office husband” had been because she already had an actual one waiting at home.

“Well,” she broke the silence. “I should be getting back.”

Bruce was taken aback by the abruptness of her attempted escape. “Oh…um…I just thought…” he stammered.

“Yes?” Her eyes studied him eagerly, but all he could fixate on was her voice. He finally recognized the nervousness she’d been speaking with.

I frighten her, he thought sorrowfully. He used to adore every minute he got to spend with her, and now, he repulsed her. Even still, he didn’t want to say goodbye.

“I just…just…thought…now that you were treating yourself, you might want to take the afternoon off. We could catch up.”

His skin crawled as he watched the nervousness spread to her eyes. They danced back and forth faster than a tennis ball in a heatedly contested rally. Finally, they slowed to a stop, settling on his.

“You mean you’re not mad at me for firing you?”

A humungous change made to Dig Down was the character of Rob Moore himself. When I had first come up with the idea, I was using the name Paul as a placeholder, but the change was much greater than just a superficial name change.

Going back to the original concept, I always had it in my head that the character who would eventually become Rob Moore would find himself in trouble and turn to his father for help. His father would be a sickly old man, who needed an aide to come to his home to take care of him. His father would refuse to help Rob, and in an act of desperation, Rob would do what he had to to get what he needed. All of this should sound pretty familiar.

But the key difference in this original concept was…Rob Moore was initially innocent!

Rob was originally just going to be a character who was hard on his luck, either turned into a patsy by the company he worked for, or possibly extorted into doing illegal things until an explosive scandal came to light. Back in 2011, my idea for Rob’s driving force was to have him escape long enough for the truth to surface, and that meant going into hiding for potentially years. It wasn’t until his father refused to help him that the desperation for self-preservation kicked in and Rob did something he would never be able to take back.

This setup presented a lot of problems though. A major one was that I couldn’t come up with a reason why his father would refuse to help him if Rob was a good guy who was just down on his luck. His father would already be established as terminally ill, and the idea was that Rob would be forced to do something where the reader would immediately want him to be caught for the remainder of the story, even if he was initially innocent. But if he had a parent like that, who didn’t have a compelling reason not to help his son, I thought on some level, readers would still side with Rob. Even the addition of a pregnant aide and what Rob would have to do with her caused some issues, because I felt at that point readers might find her fate was just thrown in there, and would want justice for her instead of for Rob’s father.

So, the idea for Dig Down was shelved. For 6 years. Until I finally came up with the idea to have Rob be guilty from the start. Then I had a reason for his father’s refusal that felt believable and understandable. Then Rob’s actions feel more in character.

Making this one change was monumental. And it brought about even more changes to Dig Down, which I will get into next week.

Since I’ve been talking about rewrites the past few weeks, I thought I would share some of the ways that Dig Down has evolved over the course of writing it. The following weeks of posts will be about the significant changes it went through from concept to publication.

I came up with the idea for Dig Down back in 2011. Two images came to mind, a scene in Reservoir Dogs where Mr. Pink is running from cops, and a scene in Inception where Leonardo DiCaprio was running from pursuers through an alleyway that narrowed to the point where he became stuck and had to tug his way free to keep fleeing. It was these two images that made me want to write a story about a man on the run.

When I asked myself who the man was running from, I thought “Wouldn’t it be interesting if he was running from everyone?” I started coming up with ideas for placeholder characters for who would be after my protagonist, who I was calling Paul at the time (and would eventually become Rob). First, there would be a loan shark (The Shark), just some low level thug who I thought would be good for an initial thrill to set the tone. There would also be a drug dealer (el Volcan), cops who were after him because they were in the pocket of someone in power who was sinister, and a mob boss who would come along later in the story and want him dead (the Sociopath).

And this got me thinking about another idea that I had started drafting 2 years prior. In that story, a degenerate, Buddy, digs up a corpse, Fletch executed by one gang and brings it to be paid by a second gang who put a price on the Fletch’s head before the second gang realized Fletch was already killed. Only Fletch was smuggling diamonds for a third gang, and once word got back to them that Fletch was killed, they start coming after Buddy for their diamonds. And the two gangs that initially wanted Fletch dead go to war with each other and are also after Buddy.

The name I had for this other story back in 2009 was Dig Down Deep. I stopped writing it because although I wanted it to fantastically over the top, I was having a hard time focusing it and moving the story along to where it needed to go.  Two years later, when I started getting excited about this idea, I decided this would be the story that bore the name Dig Down Deep, a title that it kept until I finished the mall scene in the first draft, and shortened it to Dig Down.

So the first significant change made during the process was overhauling what Dig Down was even about, digging up a new idea out of the ashes of a failed one.

For the longest time, Bruce stared at the boarded up façade in stunned silence. His eyes no longer held the faintest detection of bleariness from the whisky, yet he found it hard to believe them.

Finally, his lip curled in the slightest tilt of a smile.

His initial thought to retreat before he was recognized disintegrated. Bruce chuckled at the foolishness to flee. There was no need to leave this place.

He belonged here.

He had been here years before Preston and Moore had bought the building as part of their meteoric expansion. The years had not been kind to Bruce since their arrival. Bruce had once walked these streets for years, considering himself the ‘Lord of the Financial District.’ He was as much of a sales rep, signing new clients to the firm, as he was an analyst. For years, he felt like there was the go to guy for getting the job done at Hadley Financial Co., and that there was nothing he couldn’t do when he walked through their doors.

Then this firm that no one ever heard of from Arizona started buying up property all over the country, expanding into different regional offices, and all the clients he had wooed from competitors went flocking to the new kid on the block. This new firm delivered haymaker after haymaker, long after Bruce had been pummeled into the canvass.

But I’m still here.

The passersby were too busied absorbed in their own lives to notice him spit on their front door. The gesture didn’t quench his thirst to lash out. He doubted people would still ignore him if he exacted any further revenge, and decided to disappear into the alley surrounding Preston and Moore to relieve himself along their walls instead of on their front stoop like he wanted to.

Bruce chuckled as he emerged back onto the sidewalk. He felt a sense of vindication, not in what he’d just done, but that he’d outlasted them. He’d said for years that something was fishy about the way the firm was operating, that there was no way to have that much sustained growth. It was reinvigorating to have lived long enough to see he was right.

It was all unfair, he thought to himself as he looked around the street again, this time regaining his long lost perspective that he not only belonged here, but that these streets belonged to him.

They’ll see that now.  They might not recognize me at first, but if they see me now…they’ll probably be eager to see me…eager to apologize, ready to admit they were wrong.

Ready to welcome me back.

Bruce felt he could’ve flown back to his old office building. It hadn’t been so long that he’d forgotten the way. He arched his scraggly brow when he saw it. The façade looked dingy and faded, not the glowing beacon he’d expected, or had envisioned it to be through the lenses of nostalgia.

No. It’s definitely different.

The sun didn’t shine off the windows because they hadn’t been cleaned in some time. There wasn’t a steady flow of people walking in and out of the front door, both customers and employees alike. He realized he hadn’t been the only casualty in Hadley Financial’s purge.

“Bruce?” a familiar voice asked behind him.

Slowly, he turned to face her.

“Hello, Miranda.”

When I begin to edit my stories, I take a completely different approach to my writing. As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I’m writing a first draft, if I realize I’ve made a mistake (something major, not a grammar or spelling mistake), unless it’s within the page I’m currently typing, I continue to forge ahead so I keep my momentum.

Once I’ve gotten a first draft down, all subsequent drafts are a whole other animal. I still go through page by page, chapter by chapter, but now, if I’ve missed something, I have no problem zipping back to an earlier page or chapter to make that revision.

The reason for this change in my attitude has to do with accomplishment. If I’m working on a second draft or later, that means I’ve already written the story once. The weight of that accomplishment isn’t lost on me. I know I’ve done something a lot of people want to see out to do but never see through.

No matter what, I have that first draft. All drafts I’m working on afterwards are saved as a completely different file, so even if I make changes that I don’t like, I still have proof of what I’ve already accomplished. While rewrites are hard trying to determine what you want to edit and how, this actually makes it easier for me.

It’s because I already have this version of the story written that allows me the freedom to dart around it making changes. Even after the extensive outlining I do, sometimes, a plot point or line of dialogue doesn’t go where I think it does. It takes a first draft (at least) to really understand how the story should come together. Once I actually have the whole story down on paper, I know what belongs where within it. It’s no longer about keeping the momentum going, it’s about making sure everything’s in its right place and when you read it it’s smooth as silk. With the two weeks I take away from my story, I’ve also got a fresher pair of eyes to review it, which makes it easier to spot changes that need to be made that I missed the first time, or the way a passage or chapter should read.

Remember, the hardest part of the writing process is over. The story has been written. Now it just needs to be reworked so that it can reach its true potential. When I look at rewrites from that perspective, it makes it a lot easier to make revisions, because I know I’m just giving the story all the polish it needs to be as great as it can be.

Bruce found himself doing something he hadn’t done in the better part of a year: strutting down the street. It was intoxicating to see his feet hadn’t lost their ability to move with a swagger in their step.

He pressed himself to recall the last time he’d won a negotiation before this afternoon. There had been plenty of pleading with the bank not to foreclose on him, and begging for someone to hire him at countless job interviews, but this deal with the school teacher finally ended the longest dry spell of his life.

Like riding a bike.

Bruce read the name on the bill: Hamilton. It had been so long since he’d seen one, he’d forgotten which president was on it. When he was a big shot, he would’ve never touched a denomination this small, not even to blow his nose with. Now, it was his most prized possession since he’d moved into the park.

He chuckled to himself imagining the look on Hakeem’s face when he bought tonight’s bottle of cheap whisky with an actual ten dollar bill. Hakeem was sure to shit bricks at the sight of it. Most of the time, Bruce dumped a mountain of coins and one dollar bills on the counter that he’d accumulated over a couple of days.

Bruce looked up to see where he was, and for the first time, noticed the stares he was getting from the people who actually spared a glance at him. Most were too busy orchestrating deals on their phones, hailing cabs, or talking to one another to even notice him. He was just another derelict who’d ventured into the financial district, and as long as he wasn’t hassling them for money, they were more than willing to ignore him.

His throat ran dry. The half bottle of whisky he’d poured down his throat today felt like a distant memory.

Why? Of all the places to meander to, why’d my feet carry me here?

Muscle memory, he supposed.

He felt himself shrink under their hostile gazes. For a moment, he hugged his ten dollar bill tight to his chest in fear, though not because he believed any of them would waste the effort to try and take it from him. They were all like him. Or rather, they were all like he once was. Bruce cradled the bill closely because it was the closest thing he had to a security blanket.

Please, he begged. Please don’t let any of them recognize me.

Though he was being analyzed by some hostile eyes, he was grateful there wasn’t the faintest hint of recognition in any of them. He had marched up and down this street proudly for a whole decade, but that old version of him was clearly long forgotten.

His eyes scanned up and down the sidewalk. So much was still familiar. Emilio was still running his taco stand at the corner, with his usual line of twenty people taking a late lunch. Rebecca was lazily waving people in and out of the paid parking lot while never putting down the latest book she was wearing out. Even old Mr. Garrison was leading a group of executives into his limo to head off to some restaurant or golf course to conduct some business.

So much looked the same, and yet everything felt so foreign. No one in a power suit sharing the side walk recognized him, but at the same time, he didn’t recognize any of them either. They all looked much younger than he was when he was trading stocks.

A slight breeze picked up, ripping a napkin from the hands of one of Emilio’s customers. Bruce watched it dance along the sidewalk until it brushed up against a building whose windows and doors were boarded up. His breath caught as he took in the monstrosity for the first time in years.

The building was the old Midwest branch of Preston and Moore.