Every novel goes through editing. Things come in, things go out. More is made of some things and less of others. And then a thousand tiny tweaks occur.
Analogue Men lost very little – only one piece of any real size, in fact. My publisher noticed we didn’t actually need the short chapter about yoga at all. Yes, I thought it was funny. I have no idea if she did. But once she raised the dreaded question of relevance, I knew it was gone. Maybe I had things I really wanted to say about yoga, but is Analogue Men a novel about yoga? No. Does the yoga chapter take the story forward in any way? No. Does it cast fresh light on the workings of the central character’s brain? No. That job’s already in hand.
In editing a novel, you pick your battles. And sometimes you tell yourself, ‘this’ll at least give me an out-take to share when the book comes out’.
So here it is. The missing yoga chapter. It takes place after Andrew goes for a run one morning. Other than that, there’s nothing you need to know.
***
I’ve always taken a yoga DVD with me when I’ve travelled for work, and always the same yoga DVD, featuring Jessie Chapman, supple as a jellyfish, on the beach at Byron Bay.
Jessie Chapman, who never breaks a sweat, would not condone moving straight from the run to the mat, but Jessie Chapman isn’t the boss of my day and we get on perfectly when I allocate her twenty seven minutes to order me around, calmly and reassuringly and in the same series of instructions and poses every time.
My three favourite yoga poses are tadasana (mountain pose), savasana (corpse pose) and the rest at the end. At a technical level, tadasana might be complicated in fifteen intricate ways, but the lumpen non-yogaphile – the brittle question-mark-shaped conscript – can learn to love it as the pose he or she comes to know as ‘standing still’. As for corpse pose, even dogs can play dead. You’re flat on your back with your arms out to the sides. It’s only number two for me because, in yoga, there is no pillow. And without a pillow, my neck holds my head just above the floor.
I am not a group yoga person. I do not do yoga for the bells, or to chant ‘om’ with other devotees, or to have a hippy make odd observations about my thyroid status. That intrusive triad sums up the one yoga class I went to. I do yoga because, if I don’t, I might seize up into a big nerve-crunching act of Meccano.
What I don’t understand is why people pay for classes at all. Isn’t that just paying for someone to stand in front of you and tell you you’re crap at bending, and all the while you’re risking a fart in company?
After twenty-seven minutes I don’t feel serene or that I’ve gone any way to tidying my errant chakras, but at least it’s done. For what it’s worth, I’ve banked another yoga credit. When the day of reckoning comes and all spines are assessed and most found wanting, I can know I’ve got Jessie Chapman in my corner, insisting that I’ve done my bit.
***
Nick Earls 
This is great, Nick. And ‘lost chapter’ – think I’ll do an AYSM one for darrengroth.com.
You should. I look on it as the equivalent of the deleted scenes you get on a DVD.
Indeedy. In AYSM’s case, it was the deleted POV of a character that made up much of the first draft’s final act (you might have an idea of who it was that didn’t get to tell their side of the story).
I don’t mind that the yoga chapter was left out of your book. Good though it might be, I leave yoga out of everything! 🙂