ELEMENTS OF STYLE...

Today, my husband, John, replaced an old pair of French doors in our family room with a new pair. The old pair were original to the family room---however, they ought never have been installed in it. They were simply too overpowering in scale and too dark. Because they were oversized, they took up virtually one entire wall, and because they were stained a deep oak, they soaked up all the sunshine that would otherwise have beamed cheerily into our family room, as well. For all these reasons, I had never liked them, and I was glad to see them go.

The new pair we picked out to replace them are in proper proportion to our family room and very light and airy; and as I periodically watched John work to get them into place, it occurred to me that the installation process was very much like constructing a novel.

First, he had to have a good frame for the doors, the same way I need to have a good basic plot structure for my books---because, obviously, doors hang on a frame, in the very same way that novels hang on their basic plot structures. Start with a poor frame or structure in either case, and eventually, the whole project will collapse. So John carefully built a good frame, strong and sturdy, then hung the doors, just as I fill out my own basic plot structures with pages of thoughtfully chosen words.

After that, all the tweaking began. Shimming, squaring, sawing, gluing, hammering, nailing...I had no idea there was so much involved in hanging a pair of doors---except that, on some level, I actually did. For it was just like my sitting down to revise and edit my own work, trimming down some pages, shoring up others, and ensuring that everything I've written hangs together correctly and that all the loose ends are satisfactorily tied up at the conclusion, that all closes perfectly---just like our new French doors.

But that still wasn't the end of the whole process. Because of course, after John had got to that stage with our doors, there was still the plasterboard to put into place around them, followed by the paint, and the wood trim. This was the equivalent of my own novel "polishing," the time when I select lines of poetry for chapter headings, decide whether or not to include a map or maps, a cast of characters or a family tree, and yes, once even a floorplan for the manor house in one of my books. Are all these elements of style truly necessary? Perhaps not. But then again, I don't think our new French doors would look nearly as fine without all their little finishing touches, either.

No doubt, some people don't care what their own doors look like, as long as they close, lock, and keep out drafts and burglars. But in our house, we use our family room a lot. It's where we eat our supper, where my son, Shane, and his friends do their homework, and where John and I unwind together after a long day. So we want the doors in our family room not only to function properly, but also to be as attractive and pleasing to the eye as possible. I suppose I'm the very same way about my novels. I spend countless hours writing them, so I like them to meet all my own criteria in all respects. If a map or a floorplan helps me envision something in a book, then I think it will probably help my readers do the same.