Sometimes I wonder if I really do know how to write, because on every story I've done, my final draft is usually very, very different from my first one. The story is the same...basically...but events and characters have rearranged themselves massively, and I wonder why the hell they didn't come out in that order to begin with.
For APoS, in chapter 3 of Derry I've rearranged the order in which Brendan discusses his best mates. For some reason I'd started with his Protestant friends in The Fountain (a small Protestant enclave along the south side of the walls; Brendan's initial home is along the western edge) instead of his Catholic friends. It doesn't make sense, that way. His Catholic friends -- Colm, Danny, Paidraig and Eammon -- figure far more importantly in Brendan's life than Gerry and Billy. Especially starting in 1969.
So I spent today rearranging them. There have been three drafts before this and I'm just now catching on to this? It makes me feel even more out of it and wrong-headed as a writer.
This is the tail of Waterloo Street, right by Butchers Gate, and it seems like behind them is the beginning of construction to route Fahan to connect with Waterloo, which happened in the early 60s, if I have my timing right.
Farther back is Walker's Pillar, which was destroyed by an IRA bomb in 1974...or was it '73? Whichever, by that point Nailors Row, which sat facing the walls from the pillar to the last bastion, had been demolished to make way for a grassy knoll leading up to the walls.
I think the mist just hides them, which is why the poster probably thought this was taken after they'd been torn down. It adds a lovely aura of mystery to the image...something I play with, later, when Brendan is wandering around a city that has massive open spaces left behind after blocks and blocks of houses were demolished and others boarded up waiting for the wrecking ball.
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