This article is a record of the writing and editing process (from my perspective as author) of my short story “The River Man’s Spirits”, published in the Shadow Plays anthology in April 2007.

I wrote the story specifically for the anthology. While technically unthemed, submissions for the anthology had the brief “stories that hint at, are related to, or were inspired by the title ‘Shadow Plays’”.

I wrote the first draft longhand in an old A5-sized diary, begun on 7th September 2005. The last handwritten page is dated 17th September, which represents a little over a week of writing time (a couple of days I missed).

It appears that the writing process went fairly smoothly (for me). The first draft represents around 400 words a day, spending probably one hour a day on average. When I started I had minimal idea for how it would go. I kicked off with a “saying” among some villagers (removed from the final version—see below), and had in mind the final scene that I wanted to get to. The rest came as I went. I rarely plan any further than that.

The original working title was “The Hungry Sand”, but when it came time to submit, I’d modified the title to “The Sand Has No Biscuits”. The story is set in a village, and in the first draft the villagers had a superstitious saying about the nearby sand hills. I never felt comfortable with the title I used for submission, and it was one of the first things the editors requested to change. I dropped the title immediately and also ripped out the in-story references to the saying (again, at editorial request. No argument from me).

The original draft took little in the way of research, since I set my fictional Australian village in a place where I had spent a bit of time while growing up, near the Anabranch Creek and the sand hills just outside of Wentworth, New South Wales.

Creating a name for my “Desert Man” (an indigenous Australian in my alternate-Earth setting) consumed most of my research effort. I wanted a name that sounded right but wasn’t the name of a real person.

I submitted on 6th October, and received an acceptance response mid-December.

The editing process continued over the next few months, involving several versions of the story going back and forth between the editors and myself.

In addition to the title change, the only major editorial choice came with the name for Tanabli, one of the characters. Elise Bunter (Shadow Plays editor) raised the problem that the name didn’t ring true. In the end, despite “trying on” a number of other names for him, we decided to leave him unchanged.

On 14 January 2007, the proof (the story formatted as it will be published) arrived in my inbox. At the proofing stage, only outrageous problems and/or obvious errors are allowed to be changed.

I did find a few things I would have liked to change, but they weren’t glaring errors, so I let them be. I don’t know if the editing process for an author ever truly ends.

For the record, if I was going to make some changes to the story as published, they would be:

• Page 165: “Sand curled up between her toes”. The sand “curled”, hey? I didn’t know sand could be curly. More likely she curled her toes through the sand.
• Page 167: “See” and “seeing” appear three times in two sentences. I’d remove the repetitiveness.
• Page ??: There was at least a third thing, but I’ve somehow—despite a meticulous filing system—lost my marked up proofs. <looks sheepish>