Because Hatch was written in two main sittings, separated by ten years, it provides an opportunity for those interested in such matters to take a look at one person's writing process. In these digital days, such examples are growing increasingly rare. First drafts in themselves aren't anything unusual--or even anything to be particularly proud of--but a hand-written 17-year-old rough draft may merit attention as a historical curiosity, if not for its literary worth.

First Scene, 1982: The germ from which stories sprout is sometimes a character, sometimes a situation, and sometimes a theme. Writers are motivated to write by the desire to construct a plot in which that character, or situation, or theme, can grow and be explored. Hatch sprang from an idea about parents and children escaping from the unhealthy patterns of the past. This is supported by the available evidence (suitably chopped off to prevent spoilers): the first words actually written were not from the prologue, or the first chapter, but rather material that later became--with remarkably little change--the key scene in Chapter Fourteen.

First Page, 1982: The first draft of Hatch, written over six months in the winter of 1982/83 in Salem, NY, ran about 235 handwritten pages and fizzled without an end in sight. In tone it is light and humorous, and the clues lead the protagonist who would become Natalie along a trail of games and sporting events. The brother-sister relationship, so important to the final version, is here, but proto-Natalie lives in Bergenfield and is relentlessly sweet-tempered and Buddha-like in her depth of understanding. With the exception of Daniel, none of the names (first or last) of any of the characters in this draft survived to the final version.

First Page, 1992: The second draft, written over three months in the summer of 1992 in Cairo, Egypt, forged through to an end--not the end of the final version, but an end. Its tone is more serious, and the sports theme has disappeared, leaving behind fossils such as the Scrabble game and Natalie's tennis racket. The names are still shifting, literally page by page.

Prologue, 1992: About halfway through the second draft, the author had two revelations. The first was to move Natalie out of Bergenfield and plant her in Haworth where she belonged. This moment, and the clarifying effect it had on the writing, are captured in the first draft of the prologue. The second revelation, resulting from the exhilaration of the first, was to buy a computer. Thus the prologue provides the only view we get of the intense wordplay that went on during the remainder of the writing process. Because cut and paste is now the industry standard, we may not see too many more examples of this kind--but whether we see the battlefield carnage or not, this is the sort of inner-space exploration that goes on behind the scenes of story building.

The final rewrite took place during 1998, and involved extensive editing and the writing of a completely new ending. Because all work was done on computer, there is no record of the byways that were wandered into, or the constant variation of word choice that occurred, right up until the moment of printing. Paradox for a digital age: stories aren't ever actually "finished," they are only sometimes frozen in the amber of print media.