It's the time of night for nightingales. All through the year, no matter how close dawn seems, the nightingales start singing around half three in the morning. At high summer, this time of the year, it's not as disconcerting as it is in, say, December. But living on the edge of the wood means the sounds and spirits of the forest creep in all the time.
Tonight we had a songbirdcome to visit us. I do not know how she arrived in the kitchen, but she was a little song thrush, terrified and seeking refuge in any corner she could get into. In the end, it took two of us and her fear of the cat to get her back out into the wood where she belonged. She was invisible from the moment she left the lit kitchen, gone to roost and sing again tomorrow, gone to be a little piece of a great riddle.
At this time of year, full night lasts only about five and a half hours, and I have spent it all watching the forest from my window, watching the changing wind and light flow across the meadow. It is a night for long thinking. I'm not as young as I used to be, and when the forest creeps in, it gets me right in my bones. Summer is not the time to think on death, but I do, more and more often, consider that one day I will walk into the wood and just not come back. Forty-five years it's been since I first woke here, and I do not yet know who'll be there to walk with me when I go. I think the night will be longer than this, though. Mary said she felt her death coming for a decade. And all this year, I've felt those little stirrings, that wondering what it will be like, how it will feel to melt into the wood, and how I will bear to join another woman's hand to my smith and bid him goodbye for perhaps the last time.
We do not know how long a shadow we cast over the wood when we enter it for the last time. We all ask, 'Will I be remembered?' and we all hope for the answer we want to hear.
Only just shy of four in the morning, and it is already light enough to see folk on the meadow. They never sleep, or if they do it's only so their betrotheds can cheerfully take tokens from them to prove how strong the force of virginity is. I am an old woman now, but I feel just as much like dancing on that meadow this morning as I did when I first walked on to it fifty years ago. We're never ready for what happens next. The older we get, the more real the past seems, and that's true here in a way it's not in other places, I think.
The sun will burn away the dew by six, and I will let little Annie open the pub for me. And I'm sorry, my dearest, but I have no desire to dream any more tonight. I'll leave the gate latched, and I'll sleep until noon. Come downstairs and complain about my bones, I will, and then tomorrow night, tomorrow night I'll dream of you and not night birds, or death, or who will take me into the wood ten years from now. I'll shut my curtains against the meadow, I will, and I'll sleep until noon.
29 June 2008
Gamekeeper
Lucy, only barely sixteen, with her nut brown curls and dark and roving eye, her father's joy and the thorn in her mother's side, took it upon herself to travel across the forest for a basket of apples.
'I can send the maid,' her mother said.
'You'll bring me some nice, juicy red ones?' her father asked.
No more was said, but Lucy's mother closed the door behind her and vanished to the kitchen. Lucy's father returned to his meeting with the estate's caretaker, thinking ahead to the apples that would sweeten his mood after the settling of the accounts was done.
Crisp autumn was just upon the wood, the beginning of apple season. Lucy waited every year for apple season to begin: it meant crepes and tarts and chutneys, and cider next year. The wood was no obstacle; she'd walked it all her life, alone or not. Her father kept the big house above the wood, and all the folk around the wood gave some of their harvest to him. The first apples were his favourite bounty.
All the paths opened to her like storybooks. Lucy paced the long walk down the pathways of the west wood, past the pub and the hunting lodge, down through the east wood, peppered with little farmhouses and a traveller's camp she must mention to her father, then crossed the Roman road to the apple orchard, where she let the woodsman and his wife keep her for new bread with butter and a cup of milk.
'Dusk's coming,' said the woodsman. 'You'd best start back.' He filled her basket and promised more for her father before the week was out. 'These are special, just for you.'
Lucy had the breeding to blush, and the woodsman's wife laughed at her. 'You'll be all grown up soon,' the woodsman's wife said. 'Sooner than you think.'
It is always those little things that happen moments before everything changes that we remember. Lucy laughed with the woodsman's wife and replied, 'I'll always be a girl in the woods.' Only later might she reflect and wonder if the wind shifted then, or the woodsman's wife frowned, just a bit. But not then.
Autumn creeps up on the forest with sideways slanting light and a good dose of early dusk. Evenings seem to shorten more sharply as the harvest deepens, and so Lucy found herself just crossing the meadow, just passing the hunting lodge, as the wood began to blur into evening. A single light twinkled in the hunting lodge.
'And who's this pretty fair miss?'
Lucy turned toward the voice, secure in the wood and the meadow. He was tall, taller than she was anyway, and the badge on his cloak named him an agent of the King. 'Lucy.'
'Lucy, you are a dainty young thing, aren't you? Twice as sweet as those apples you're carrying, I'm sure.'
Lucy sniffed. 'I am also Sir Harold's daughter. He keeps the house above the wood.'
Understanding dawned in the gruff gamekeeper's face. 'Ah,' he said. 'No wonder you are so bold; these are nearly your woods. Of course, the law forbids me from possessing the daughter of a nobleman.'
He was tall, Lucy thought. Tall in a rustic, woodsy sort of way. And he kept the hunting lodge for the king; he was no factor or priest. He must be some servant or lackey, barely above a poacher. What came over her then, she never could understand. 'Now, my dear good man,' she said. 'Do not be perplexed. Suppose we play a riddle game.'
'A riddle game?' The gamekeeper removed his hat and ran one very large hand through his cropped but still curly hair. 'What sort of riddle game would that be?'
Was there an edge to his voice? Lucy felt the moon rise somehow. She felt the wind all through her body. 'Suppose,' she said, 'I ask you six questions. If you answer all six of my questions correctly, then you may have a chance with me. Choose not to play, or answer even one incorrectly, and you'll see me again only in broad daylight and only accompanied by one of my father's men.'
In the dimming light, the gamekeeper smiled. 'It would be foolish, then, to refuse to play, wouldn't it? As this is my only chance.' He led her to a bench at the edge of the meadow. 'Sit down, then, and let's begin. But first let me tell you that I am Captain Wedderburn. If I win this riddle game, you may learn my Christian name. For now, you may call me 'sir'.'
'Very well, sir.' Lucy chuckled at the thought of an artless fellow like this winning a riddle game with the daughter of a knight. It was funny to say 'sir' to such a man. 'I will ask the first question.'
Captain Wedderburn nodded gravely, that smile still flickering across his face in the dimming light. 'By all means,' he said.
'What,' asked Lucy, as if she owned the forest and all the land beyond, 'is rounder than a ring?'
'Mm,' replied the gamekeeper. 'This is an old riddle, and I know the answer. The earth is rounder than a ring!'
Lucy held up one finger. 'That's one right,' she said, 'but you still have five to answer. Second question: what is higher than a tree?'
The gamekeeper shook his head. 'You insult me, my pretty fair miss. Heaven is higher than a tree.'
Lucy's cheeks burned. Two questions right. Perhaps the gamekeeper was not as simple as she'd thought. 'These are the riddles my mother taught me,' she countered.
The gamekeeper held his tongue and gestured for her to proceed.
With two fingers now aloft, Lucy asked, 'What is worse than a woman's curse?' Around them, the night seemed to close in, sounds fell away, and not even the songbirds scolded.
'Oh, pretty girl,' whispered the gamekeeper. 'Only the devil is worse than a woman's curse.'
How soft his voice was. Lucy felt warm and cold at the same time. There was time, she thought vaguely, time to jump up and throw all the apples at this strange, knowing man, time to flee into the forest and take the little paths through the undergrowth, time to run. At the same time, she felt the next question on the tip of her tongue. It was like a dance now, like a phrase she had to say, like a prayer response at mass, written into her heart. 'What is deeper than the sea?'
Did the gamekeeper's smile soften? Was there more to him now than a man playing a game with a pretty girl? The fourth question, now. If he got that one right, he was on the winning side. 'Hell is deeper than the sea, miss. Hell is deeper than the sea.'
Lucy panicked. 'Which bird sings first?' she blurted out. 'And-- and, which one sings best, as well?'
The gamekeeper chuckled. 'That is really two questions,' he said. 'But we will pretend, if you like, that it is only one.' He brushed his finger across her cheek. 'You are such a beautiful girl,' he said. 'The lark sings first, but I think the thrush sings best.'
The realisation that she would lose this game came to Lucy, gently and with finality. It came to her in the slow way the sixth question formed in her head, the unfamiliar pleasure of that warm, strong finger upon her face. 'Where does the dew first fall?' she asked. She was unable to stop herself from asking.
'The dew falls in many places,' replied the gamekeeper. 'But the only place it is sure to reach and sink in, its only true destination, is the earth itself.' He took both her hands. 'Now stand up for me, sweet girl.'
Lucy stood up, leaving the basket of apples on the bench.
'Let me take those for you,' said the Captain solicitiously. 'Here, take my other hand.' He led her into the hunting lodge by the hand, then slipped a hand around her waist as they went up the stairs. 'We wouldn't want you to fall.'
Down the hall and into a large bedroom he led her. 'Go on and lie next to the wall,' he said. The bed was made of soft down, a bed for a nobleman or a king. He placed the basket of apples on a table by the small window, and he barred the door. And one by one, he gave her only the sweetest apples, until she was full and sleepy, and then he pulled her into his arms and whispered his name into her ear.
Night fell over the wood, a harvest night with a huge, round moon and the promise of grain and more apples, just days away. A mile to the west, Lucy's father paced the floor, anxious for his daughter and his apples, while his wife accepted with resignation why she'd suddenly remembered the riddle game.
'I can send the maid,' her mother said.
'You'll bring me some nice, juicy red ones?' her father asked.
No more was said, but Lucy's mother closed the door behind her and vanished to the kitchen. Lucy's father returned to his meeting with the estate's caretaker, thinking ahead to the apples that would sweeten his mood after the settling of the accounts was done.
Crisp autumn was just upon the wood, the beginning of apple season. Lucy waited every year for apple season to begin: it meant crepes and tarts and chutneys, and cider next year. The wood was no obstacle; she'd walked it all her life, alone or not. Her father kept the big house above the wood, and all the folk around the wood gave some of their harvest to him. The first apples were his favourite bounty.
All the paths opened to her like storybooks. Lucy paced the long walk down the pathways of the west wood, past the pub and the hunting lodge, down through the east wood, peppered with little farmhouses and a traveller's camp she must mention to her father, then crossed the Roman road to the apple orchard, where she let the woodsman and his wife keep her for new bread with butter and a cup of milk.
'Dusk's coming,' said the woodsman. 'You'd best start back.' He filled her basket and promised more for her father before the week was out. 'These are special, just for you.'
Lucy had the breeding to blush, and the woodsman's wife laughed at her. 'You'll be all grown up soon,' the woodsman's wife said. 'Sooner than you think.'
It is always those little things that happen moments before everything changes that we remember. Lucy laughed with the woodsman's wife and replied, 'I'll always be a girl in the woods.' Only later might she reflect and wonder if the wind shifted then, or the woodsman's wife frowned, just a bit. But not then.
Autumn creeps up on the forest with sideways slanting light and a good dose of early dusk. Evenings seem to shorten more sharply as the harvest deepens, and so Lucy found herself just crossing the meadow, just passing the hunting lodge, as the wood began to blur into evening. A single light twinkled in the hunting lodge.
'And who's this pretty fair miss?'
Lucy turned toward the voice, secure in the wood and the meadow. He was tall, taller than she was anyway, and the badge on his cloak named him an agent of the King. 'Lucy.'
'Lucy, you are a dainty young thing, aren't you? Twice as sweet as those apples you're carrying, I'm sure.'
Lucy sniffed. 'I am also Sir Harold's daughter. He keeps the house above the wood.'
Understanding dawned in the gruff gamekeeper's face. 'Ah,' he said. 'No wonder you are so bold; these are nearly your woods. Of course, the law forbids me from possessing the daughter of a nobleman.'
He was tall, Lucy thought. Tall in a rustic, woodsy sort of way. And he kept the hunting lodge for the king; he was no factor or priest. He must be some servant or lackey, barely above a poacher. What came over her then, she never could understand. 'Now, my dear good man,' she said. 'Do not be perplexed. Suppose we play a riddle game.'
'A riddle game?' The gamekeeper removed his hat and ran one very large hand through his cropped but still curly hair. 'What sort of riddle game would that be?'
Was there an edge to his voice? Lucy felt the moon rise somehow. She felt the wind all through her body. 'Suppose,' she said, 'I ask you six questions. If you answer all six of my questions correctly, then you may have a chance with me. Choose not to play, or answer even one incorrectly, and you'll see me again only in broad daylight and only accompanied by one of my father's men.'
In the dimming light, the gamekeeper smiled. 'It would be foolish, then, to refuse to play, wouldn't it? As this is my only chance.' He led her to a bench at the edge of the meadow. 'Sit down, then, and let's begin. But first let me tell you that I am Captain Wedderburn. If I win this riddle game, you may learn my Christian name. For now, you may call me 'sir'.'
'Very well, sir.' Lucy chuckled at the thought of an artless fellow like this winning a riddle game with the daughter of a knight. It was funny to say 'sir' to such a man. 'I will ask the first question.'
Captain Wedderburn nodded gravely, that smile still flickering across his face in the dimming light. 'By all means,' he said.
'What,' asked Lucy, as if she owned the forest and all the land beyond, 'is rounder than a ring?'
'Mm,' replied the gamekeeper. 'This is an old riddle, and I know the answer. The earth is rounder than a ring!'
Lucy held up one finger. 'That's one right,' she said, 'but you still have five to answer. Second question: what is higher than a tree?'
The gamekeeper shook his head. 'You insult me, my pretty fair miss. Heaven is higher than a tree.'
Lucy's cheeks burned. Two questions right. Perhaps the gamekeeper was not as simple as she'd thought. 'These are the riddles my mother taught me,' she countered.
The gamekeeper held his tongue and gestured for her to proceed.
With two fingers now aloft, Lucy asked, 'What is worse than a woman's curse?' Around them, the night seemed to close in, sounds fell away, and not even the songbirds scolded.
'Oh, pretty girl,' whispered the gamekeeper. 'Only the devil is worse than a woman's curse.'
How soft his voice was. Lucy felt warm and cold at the same time. There was time, she thought vaguely, time to jump up and throw all the apples at this strange, knowing man, time to flee into the forest and take the little paths through the undergrowth, time to run. At the same time, she felt the next question on the tip of her tongue. It was like a dance now, like a phrase she had to say, like a prayer response at mass, written into her heart. 'What is deeper than the sea?'
Did the gamekeeper's smile soften? Was there more to him now than a man playing a game with a pretty girl? The fourth question, now. If he got that one right, he was on the winning side. 'Hell is deeper than the sea, miss. Hell is deeper than the sea.'
Lucy panicked. 'Which bird sings first?' she blurted out. 'And-- and, which one sings best, as well?'
The gamekeeper chuckled. 'That is really two questions,' he said. 'But we will pretend, if you like, that it is only one.' He brushed his finger across her cheek. 'You are such a beautiful girl,' he said. 'The lark sings first, but I think the thrush sings best.'
The realisation that she would lose this game came to Lucy, gently and with finality. It came to her in the slow way the sixth question formed in her head, the unfamiliar pleasure of that warm, strong finger upon her face. 'Where does the dew first fall?' she asked. She was unable to stop herself from asking.
'The dew falls in many places,' replied the gamekeeper. 'But the only place it is sure to reach and sink in, its only true destination, is the earth itself.' He took both her hands. 'Now stand up for me, sweet girl.'
Lucy stood up, leaving the basket of apples on the bench.
'Let me take those for you,' said the Captain solicitiously. 'Here, take my other hand.' He led her into the hunting lodge by the hand, then slipped a hand around her waist as they went up the stairs. 'We wouldn't want you to fall.'
Down the hall and into a large bedroom he led her. 'Go on and lie next to the wall,' he said. The bed was made of soft down, a bed for a nobleman or a king. He placed the basket of apples on a table by the small window, and he barred the door. And one by one, he gave her only the sweetest apples, until she was full and sleepy, and then he pulled her into his arms and whispered his name into her ear.
Night fell over the wood, a harvest night with a huge, round moon and the promise of grain and more apples, just days away. A mile to the west, Lucy's father paced the floor, anxious for his daughter and his apples, while his wife accepted with resignation why she'd suddenly remembered the riddle game.
24 June 2007
Let's talk about process
"When I start a book, I always think it's patently absurd that I can write one. No one, certainly not me, can write a book 500 pages long. But I know I can write 15 pates, and if I write 15 pages every day, eventually I'll have 500 of them." --John Saul, American novelist
John Saul writes thrillers, and I'm not familiar with his work, although I recognised some titles when I did a bibliography search. Even though I don't know the guy, and I imagine we don't have very much in common (particularly since he's published and I'm, you know, not), I think I understand that feeling of being completely inequal to the work I am about to do.
I suspect that unlike most people, I don't just feel this way about big things, like writing a 500-page novel. I feel this way about almost everything I have to do in life. A task always looks so much bigger to me before I begin it. Sometimes it looks so big that I sometimes can't bring myself to begin it.
Over the last 30 years, I have begun more novels than I care to think about. I have finished only two of them, and one of them is twenty years better than the other. That doesn't mean it's good enough to be published, and I am beginning to fear that it really may not be, but that's a topic for another day.
Sylvia Louise Engdahl, who wrote some books I loved as a teenager and then had a number of them republished a few years ago, says that the great mystery is not why she stopped writing books for publication, but why she was able to write books at all.
Over the years, with my first notebooks and then computer files worth of novel ideas, character sketches, location sketches, moved from notebook to notebook to computer to computer to PDA to computer and back again so many times, I've wondered if that wasn't true for me as well. Maybe I just couldn't write books, couldn't write novels, wasn't cut out for it, should stick to songwriting. And then one year my husband got sent to Singapore on secondment and my son and I tagged along. The secondment lasted four and a half months, and I really hated Singapore, felt exposed and foreign there, and just didn't find a way to fit in or feel at home.
On the first of May, 2005, my husband, son and I went to a used book sale at the expo centre in Singapore, and we came away with a ton of stuff. The exchange rate was so good and the books were so cheap! One of the things we left with, a book I didn't even blog about at the time, was Natalie Goldberg's Thunder and Lightning. Natalie Goldberg is a sort of writer's writer. Her book Writing Down the Bones was one of the textbooks used in my college creative writing classes, and I still have my college edition of the book, torn and dog-eared and loved and carried around for years, through moves all over the US and then the world. Writing Down the Bones is about writing practise as meditation, and it's a great creativity spark, along with a whole bunch of other things I discovered in my 20s and still use today. But Thunder and Lightning is about plotting novels. Or at least it was about plotting novels to me. There are other things one could take away from the book, but I took away the essential elements of what someone like me, who started my writing life wanting to write novels but turned into a poet somewhere along the way and then a songwriter, needs to write a book, from start to finish, what needs to happen inside a book.
You can study literature for years, read books voraciously for years, and not know what that thing is. And I don't know if I can tell you what it is. But it's something about plotting and pacing and having an idea in mind of where things are going before you get there. When you come out of poetry, or even songwriting, places where all is sometimes revealed in the all-important last line, or the bridge is your exposition, pacing is less important: a three-minute song may have most of the elements of hundred-thousand word novel in miniature, but stretching those elements without making them go on forever, making action happen without going over the top, those are things you just can't figure out without doing them.
I'm glad I wrote a crap novel in my twenties that convinced me I shouldn't be writing novels at that point in my life. I'm glad I got that out of my system and started living and learning to think of writing as something I loved to do and would love to do more of, rather than something I got to do all the time as a university student. I didn't appreciate writing time as a kid, and I almost didn't appreciate it in Singapore. We arrived in Singapore in February, and it took me until the end of May, twenty-nine days after I bought Thunder and Lightning, to figure out that what I was supposed to be doing in Singapore was writing a novel. I mean, sure, I got a lot of knitting work done, but in our last month in Singapore, I wrote twenty-two thousand words. That's thirty thousand less than you nanowrimo people, but I'm not really sure that I'd have produced anything of quality with thirty thousand more words to play with. And it was a good foundation for something that, a little more than a year later, had become a hundred and five thousand word novel, for real. With a plot and a villain and conflicts and everything!
I wrote an outline. I did. It was sketchy, but I wrote an outline. I defined my villain as strongly as I could ahead of the game. I had huge questions about how the book would end; it was almost a choose-your-own-adventure in my head. Protagonist could choose option a and get ending a, or option b and get b ending, etc. In the end, I took a couple of weeks and produced a timeline. Before long, I was sitting down to write with not a word count but a plot goal in mind. "Today, I will write until the refrigerator falls from the sky and hits Jake on the head," for (lame) example. My goal for each session was to get to the next bend in the plot road. Thinking about it, that is a good way for me to structure a novel, I think. Even if the outline is written only a few days before the story itself, it still gives a guideline. Even if the plot synopsis is sketchy, there's still a map to follow. Of course, when the first draft was finished, I had to go through and add things and edit for continuity and smoothness and all that stuff, and I've spent what feels like the last six months agonising over the first five pages, but I hear lots of people do that. Right now, in between sending query letters and sample chapters off to agents (and invariably hearing nothing, except for one very bad experience), I'm tightening dialogue and descriptions and hoping these improvements will make the book more palatable to the people who have to matter right now.
At the same time, I'm starting to feel depressed about the whole thing: why did I bother writing a whole book about such a ridiulous subject, particularly when academics on the subject can't stand the kind of thing I'm writing about? And at the same time I'm busily mulling over the plot of another book centred around the same place and characters (but not a sequel).
In a world of formulas, I suppose I need to find one if I'm going to succeed as a writer. Writing 500,000 pages fifteen pages at a time isn't a bad place to start, when you think about it. Neither, I suppose, is the ubiquitous thousand-word-a-day plan that some authors embrace. Getting focused, of course, is half the battle, and I'll tell you something else: procrastinating is part of that focus for me. Writing things like this blog entry counts as what I think of as "productive procrastination." So does cleaning up my desk, or streamlining the sweeping timeline of my setting, or finding a character sketch template I like and using it to determine who the protagonist of novel number two (yes, but we don't talk about that other one) should be.
I'm going to ask anybody reading this to outline their process for me at the end of this entry, so let me try to put mine down in words. I'll skip the germination and idea stages, since those are the things we all have in common: you look at a tree and you think, that tree looks like it has a face; I wonder what kind of a person it would make-- and then your brain just goes off. So, with an idea already in hand, here's how it went for this book.
And in my case, that's where the story ends, as nobody in the business has expressed even the slightest interest in what I'm writing, except for one extremely negative response.
What's your process? C'mon; fess up. It's not like anybody is really reading this. ;-)
John Saul writes thrillers, and I'm not familiar with his work, although I recognised some titles when I did a bibliography search. Even though I don't know the guy, and I imagine we don't have very much in common (particularly since he's published and I'm, you know, not), I think I understand that feeling of being completely inequal to the work I am about to do.
I suspect that unlike most people, I don't just feel this way about big things, like writing a 500-page novel. I feel this way about almost everything I have to do in life. A task always looks so much bigger to me before I begin it. Sometimes it looks so big that I sometimes can't bring myself to begin it.
Over the last 30 years, I have begun more novels than I care to think about. I have finished only two of them, and one of them is twenty years better than the other. That doesn't mean it's good enough to be published, and I am beginning to fear that it really may not be, but that's a topic for another day.
Sylvia Louise Engdahl, who wrote some books I loved as a teenager and then had a number of them republished a few years ago, says that the great mystery is not why she stopped writing books for publication, but why she was able to write books at all.
Over the years, with my first notebooks and then computer files worth of novel ideas, character sketches, location sketches, moved from notebook to notebook to computer to computer to PDA to computer and back again so many times, I've wondered if that wasn't true for me as well. Maybe I just couldn't write books, couldn't write novels, wasn't cut out for it, should stick to songwriting. And then one year my husband got sent to Singapore on secondment and my son and I tagged along. The secondment lasted four and a half months, and I really hated Singapore, felt exposed and foreign there, and just didn't find a way to fit in or feel at home.
On the first of May, 2005, my husband, son and I went to a used book sale at the expo centre in Singapore, and we came away with a ton of stuff. The exchange rate was so good and the books were so cheap! One of the things we left with, a book I didn't even blog about at the time, was Natalie Goldberg's Thunder and Lightning. Natalie Goldberg is a sort of writer's writer. Her book Writing Down the Bones was one of the textbooks used in my college creative writing classes, and I still have my college edition of the book, torn and dog-eared and loved and carried around for years, through moves all over the US and then the world. Writing Down the Bones is about writing practise as meditation, and it's a great creativity spark, along with a whole bunch of other things I discovered in my 20s and still use today. But Thunder and Lightning is about plotting novels. Or at least it was about plotting novels to me. There are other things one could take away from the book, but I took away the essential elements of what someone like me, who started my writing life wanting to write novels but turned into a poet somewhere along the way and then a songwriter, needs to write a book, from start to finish, what needs to happen inside a book.
You can study literature for years, read books voraciously for years, and not know what that thing is. And I don't know if I can tell you what it is. But it's something about plotting and pacing and having an idea in mind of where things are going before you get there. When you come out of poetry, or even songwriting, places where all is sometimes revealed in the all-important last line, or the bridge is your exposition, pacing is less important: a three-minute song may have most of the elements of hundred-thousand word novel in miniature, but stretching those elements without making them go on forever, making action happen without going over the top, those are things you just can't figure out without doing them.
I'm glad I wrote a crap novel in my twenties that convinced me I shouldn't be writing novels at that point in my life. I'm glad I got that out of my system and started living and learning to think of writing as something I loved to do and would love to do more of, rather than something I got to do all the time as a university student. I didn't appreciate writing time as a kid, and I almost didn't appreciate it in Singapore. We arrived in Singapore in February, and it took me until the end of May, twenty-nine days after I bought Thunder and Lightning, to figure out that what I was supposed to be doing in Singapore was writing a novel. I mean, sure, I got a lot of knitting work done, but in our last month in Singapore, I wrote twenty-two thousand words. That's thirty thousand less than you nanowrimo people, but I'm not really sure that I'd have produced anything of quality with thirty thousand more words to play with. And it was a good foundation for something that, a little more than a year later, had become a hundred and five thousand word novel, for real. With a plot and a villain and conflicts and everything!
I wrote an outline. I did. It was sketchy, but I wrote an outline. I defined my villain as strongly as I could ahead of the game. I had huge questions about how the book would end; it was almost a choose-your-own-adventure in my head. Protagonist could choose option a and get ending a, or option b and get b ending, etc. In the end, I took a couple of weeks and produced a timeline. Before long, I was sitting down to write with not a word count but a plot goal in mind. "Today, I will write until the refrigerator falls from the sky and hits Jake on the head," for (lame) example. My goal for each session was to get to the next bend in the plot road. Thinking about it, that is a good way for me to structure a novel, I think. Even if the outline is written only a few days before the story itself, it still gives a guideline. Even if the plot synopsis is sketchy, there's still a map to follow. Of course, when the first draft was finished, I had to go through and add things and edit for continuity and smoothness and all that stuff, and I've spent what feels like the last six months agonising over the first five pages, but I hear lots of people do that. Right now, in between sending query letters and sample chapters off to agents (and invariably hearing nothing, except for one very bad experience), I'm tightening dialogue and descriptions and hoping these improvements will make the book more palatable to the people who have to matter right now.
At the same time, I'm starting to feel depressed about the whole thing: why did I bother writing a whole book about such a ridiulous subject, particularly when academics on the subject can't stand the kind of thing I'm writing about? And at the same time I'm busily mulling over the plot of another book centred around the same place and characters (but not a sequel).
In a world of formulas, I suppose I need to find one if I'm going to succeed as a writer. Writing 500,000 pages fifteen pages at a time isn't a bad place to start, when you think about it. Neither, I suppose, is the ubiquitous thousand-word-a-day plan that some authors embrace. Getting focused, of course, is half the battle, and I'll tell you something else: procrastinating is part of that focus for me. Writing things like this blog entry counts as what I think of as "productive procrastination." So does cleaning up my desk, or streamlining the sweeping timeline of my setting, or finding a character sketch template I like and using it to determine who the protagonist of novel number two (yes, but we don't talk about that other one) should be.
I'm going to ask anybody reading this to outline their process for me at the end of this entry, so let me try to put mine down in words. I'll skip the germination and idea stages, since those are the things we all have in common: you look at a tree and you think, that tree looks like it has a face; I wonder what kind of a person it would make-- and then your brain just goes off. So, with an idea already in hand, here's how it went for this book.
- Identify main characters
- Identify villain
- Sketch characters
- Find villain's motivation
- Find conflict
- Find climax/crisis
- Discover how the story ends
- Make a sketchy outline of all that
- Start writing
- Refine outline
- Keep writing
- Continue refining outline
- Concentrate on writing to the plot
- Finish first draft
- Tie up loose ends
- Add colour and interest where things are sparse
- Streamline prose and tighten up loose writing
- Ask people to read
- Start sending out query letters and sample chapters.
And in my case, that's where the story ends, as nobody in the business has expressed even the slightest interest in what I'm writing, except for one extremely negative response.
What's your process? C'mon; fess up. It's not like anybody is really reading this. ;-)
18 June 2007
Semicolons
If you write, or if you read a lot and have Opinions about writing, or if you teach and have Opinions of writing, could you please spend a few seconds thinking about the semicolon? Although I have my own opinion, I am curious what you think. Here are my questions about the semicolon.
I am interested in seeing a variety of opinions on this topic.
- In your opinion, when and for what reasons is the semicolon properly used?
- Are there points of semicolon usage that bother you or disrupt the process of reading for you? What are they?
- Does the semicolon have a place in contemporary writing, and if so, where? Feel free to use examples, if any spring to mind.
I am interested in seeing a variety of opinions on this topic.
12 June 2007
"There are very few writers who are not cranks in some way."
Paul Theroux, an American writer and novelist, said that. Given his checkered reputation, he probably said it in his own defence! I chose this quote this morning because the one I skipped would have led me into the vertical takeoff rant again, and getting embroiled in that would have made me grumbly all day, thus satisfying at least one of the definitions of crank.
Are all writers cranks? I suppose it depends upon your definition. I've been accustomed to using the word to mean a bad-tempered person, but according to my dictionary, crank can also mean, "an eccentric person, especially one who is obsessed by a particular subject or theory." If you use that definition, I think writers need to be cranks.
How can you possibly spend the kind of time it takes to write 100,000-plus words on the same subject or around the same theme without becoming obsessive about it, at least in the short-term? My first complete novel, written mumble years ago and now consigned to a box on the very top of the tallest bookshelf in the house, where it stays so I can remember that I did complete a novel at twenty-two and so no one else will have any idea it's there, concerned tarot cards. I was interested in tarot cards at the time, but the writing of that book sparked a fifteen-year obsession with the fool's journey that led me no end of interesting places. That obsession failed to help me write a good book, but it sure was an interesting digression.
Similarly, other writers I know do what they can to either write about their already-healthy (or unhealthy!) obsessions, or they cultivate the art of becoming an instant expert. I do both these things, and if you write, I'll bet you do too. We are all familiar with the adage, "write what you know," but how does one become an instant expert?
Let's see. Once upon a time, I heard a song on WUMB by Richard Thompson. It was called Beeswing. Now, the song was from the album Mirror Blue, which piqued my interest because at the time I was an active Loreena McKennitt fan, and one of my favourite Loreena songs was her adaptation of Tennyson's The Lady of Shallot, which contains the lines
And sometimes thro' the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shallot.
I bought the CD because of that one song and the fact that some of the lines from the poem appear on the CD cover. The rest of the CD was completely worth listening to, and when I had an opportunity to see Richard Thompson in Atlanta, I jumped on it. But I didn't want to be one of those fans who came to a concert because of one song. I wanted to understand Richard Thompson. I bought the 1993 compilation Watching the Dark, and listened to it nonstop for three weeks before the sold-out concert. I scoured the internet, boned up on my Fairport Convention lore, and found myself, on show night, singing along with bikers and English expatriates and feeling accepted in a really big general admission crowd I'd wilfully entered alone.
Years later, when I discovered Anne Briggs, I was delighted to learn that many people believe Beeswing is about Anne Briggs.
One obsession ties in to another, you see. My current writing projects, while they do not centre around Anne Briggs as a person, hold her and the influence she had over the folk revival (and the people who had significant influence over her) very, very close.
So that's how I became an instant Richard Thompson expert, why I can still sing a lot of those songs today, how I stopped being afraid of bikers, and one of the many ways it all ties back in to English balladry. I think it's OK to be a crank, if being a crank can lead me to such amazing music, stories, and places. It's a circuitous route, isn't it, the way we come to things and weave them in to our personal mythologies.
You might even say it's like the Fool's journey.
Are all writers cranks? I suppose it depends upon your definition. I've been accustomed to using the word to mean a bad-tempered person, but according to my dictionary, crank can also mean, "an eccentric person, especially one who is obsessed by a particular subject or theory." If you use that definition, I think writers need to be cranks.
How can you possibly spend the kind of time it takes to write 100,000-plus words on the same subject or around the same theme without becoming obsessive about it, at least in the short-term? My first complete novel, written mumble years ago and now consigned to a box on the very top of the tallest bookshelf in the house, where it stays so I can remember that I did complete a novel at twenty-two and so no one else will have any idea it's there, concerned tarot cards. I was interested in tarot cards at the time, but the writing of that book sparked a fifteen-year obsession with the fool's journey that led me no end of interesting places. That obsession failed to help me write a good book, but it sure was an interesting digression.
Similarly, other writers I know do what they can to either write about their already-healthy (or unhealthy!) obsessions, or they cultivate the art of becoming an instant expert. I do both these things, and if you write, I'll bet you do too. We are all familiar with the adage, "write what you know," but how does one become an instant expert?
Let's see. Once upon a time, I heard a song on WUMB by Richard Thompson. It was called Beeswing. Now, the song was from the album Mirror Blue, which piqued my interest because at the time I was an active Loreena McKennitt fan, and one of my favourite Loreena songs was her adaptation of Tennyson's The Lady of Shallot, which contains the lines
And sometimes thro' the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shallot.
I bought the CD because of that one song and the fact that some of the lines from the poem appear on the CD cover. The rest of the CD was completely worth listening to, and when I had an opportunity to see Richard Thompson in Atlanta, I jumped on it. But I didn't want to be one of those fans who came to a concert because of one song. I wanted to understand Richard Thompson. I bought the 1993 compilation Watching the Dark, and listened to it nonstop for three weeks before the sold-out concert. I scoured the internet, boned up on my Fairport Convention lore, and found myself, on show night, singing along with bikers and English expatriates and feeling accepted in a really big general admission crowd I'd wilfully entered alone.
Years later, when I discovered Anne Briggs, I was delighted to learn that many people believe Beeswing is about Anne Briggs.
One obsession ties in to another, you see. My current writing projects, while they do not centre around Anne Briggs as a person, hold her and the influence she had over the folk revival (and the people who had significant influence over her) very, very close.
So that's how I became an instant Richard Thompson expert, why I can still sing a lot of those songs today, how I stopped being afraid of bikers, and one of the many ways it all ties back in to English balladry. I think it's OK to be a crank, if being a crank can lead me to such amazing music, stories, and places. It's a circuitous route, isn't it, the way we come to things and weave them in to our personal mythologies.
You might even say it's like the Fool's journey.
06 June 2007
"Read, read, read..."
“Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the mast. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.” --William Faulkner
Right now, I’m re-reading Little, Big, by John Crowley, thumbing through First Draft in 30 Days, by Karen Wiesner, and spicing things up with King Rat, by China Mieville. I try to keep a comfort read going almost all the time, but even though I’m re-reading Little, Big, that doesn’t make it any more comforting-- I had a hard time getting through the book the first time and I’m afraid it’s no easier now. First Draft in 30 Days is a book about outlining novels, which is something I’m thinking a lot about lately, as I’m starting work on a new fiction project and I have to structure those pretty carefully. King Rat was recommended to me by my husband, and I have to say I don’t like it very much; it got taken out of the purse rotation this week because it just wasn’t engaging me. It’s not that it isn’t a good story, but I think Neil Gaiman wrote a better version of a very similar story in Neverwhere. That’s just my opinion, of course. People are so excited about China Mieville as an author that I probably will go back and finish the book, but, ih. It’s not doing much for me.
As for First Draft in 30 Days, it’s not an example of great writing, but it’s a nonfiction book designed to lead readers through a process, and it does that reasonably well-- although I must warn you that the author doesn’t really mean you can turn out the first draft of a novel in 30 days (they just made that the title in order to sell books). What she’s really trying to do is teach you how to write a cohesive outline of a novel in 30 days, which is much more realistic. (Sorry, NaNoWriMo fiends!)
Little, Big was (and is) difficult not because it’s slow (I like slow books) but because I think Crowley’s language sometimes gets in the way of the story Although I understand the writing style, some of those parentheticals seem to go on for pages. I absolutely love the story, though. Now, Little, Big was published in 1981, when it was, according to people who look back at such things, possible to get a quiet, quirky, lyrical book published, but I cannot applaud Crowley enough for managing to avoid that thing that really gets me grumpy about contemporary fiction: the ubiquitous and apparently compulsory vertical takeoff, that thing where you’re supposed to write the first chapter of your book like a television murder mystery that starts with a violent killing and then the whole rest of the film you’re backtracking, trying to figure out what just happened. I often feel assaulted when I read books that begin like this: I scour bookstore shelves and sample pages until I find books that don’t start out with “Boris lay in a pool of his own blood,” or some such nonsense. If I wanted to read a boys’ adventure novel, a Heinlein juvie, I’d go out and get one of those. I almost never want to read books like that, alas. And it sucks to be me, because I haven’t seen a lot of quiet books making it big (or making it at all) lately. Of course, these vertical takeoffs could all just be false fronts, like the fronts of American frontier town stores-- made to look big and impressive and tall, when actually the interior of the place was little more than a shack. Maybe some of those books that start out with a bang get more humble after Chapter One, but I suspect they really just get shabby.
I remember breathing a huge sigh of relief when I first opened Peter S. Beagle’s Tamsin, a lush ghost story that kept me captivated for hours and which I have read again more than once. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman was an equally welcome change: I discovered it long after it was written and was lucky enough to acquire the illustrated novel; the other versions just aren’t the same. Your mileage may vary, standard disclaimers apply.
What does this have to do with Mr. Faulkner’s suggestion to “read, read, read?” Everything. Do it, but recognise what you like and what you don’t like. Know what you want to sound like, and read that (but not exclusively that). Don’t be afraid to say what you don’t like, but careful when you call what you don’t like crap; there are people out there who absolutely love the stuff you hate-- and it’s their right to love it, but you don’t have to read it (you certainly don’t have to finish it!), no matter what Mr. Faulkner says.
Right now, I’m re-reading Little, Big, by John Crowley, thumbing through First Draft in 30 Days, by Karen Wiesner, and spicing things up with King Rat, by China Mieville. I try to keep a comfort read going almost all the time, but even though I’m re-reading Little, Big, that doesn’t make it any more comforting-- I had a hard time getting through the book the first time and I’m afraid it’s no easier now. First Draft in 30 Days is a book about outlining novels, which is something I’m thinking a lot about lately, as I’m starting work on a new fiction project and I have to structure those pretty carefully. King Rat was recommended to me by my husband, and I have to say I don’t like it very much; it got taken out of the purse rotation this week because it just wasn’t engaging me. It’s not that it isn’t a good story, but I think Neil Gaiman wrote a better version of a very similar story in Neverwhere. That’s just my opinion, of course. People are so excited about China Mieville as an author that I probably will go back and finish the book, but, ih. It’s not doing much for me.
As for First Draft in 30 Days, it’s not an example of great writing, but it’s a nonfiction book designed to lead readers through a process, and it does that reasonably well-- although I must warn you that the author doesn’t really mean you can turn out the first draft of a novel in 30 days (they just made that the title in order to sell books). What she’s really trying to do is teach you how to write a cohesive outline of a novel in 30 days, which is much more realistic. (Sorry, NaNoWriMo fiends!)
Little, Big was (and is) difficult not because it’s slow (I like slow books) but because I think Crowley’s language sometimes gets in the way of the story Although I understand the writing style, some of those parentheticals seem to go on for pages. I absolutely love the story, though. Now, Little, Big was published in 1981, when it was, according to people who look back at such things, possible to get a quiet, quirky, lyrical book published, but I cannot applaud Crowley enough for managing to avoid that thing that really gets me grumpy about contemporary fiction: the ubiquitous and apparently compulsory vertical takeoff, that thing where you’re supposed to write the first chapter of your book like a television murder mystery that starts with a violent killing and then the whole rest of the film you’re backtracking, trying to figure out what just happened. I often feel assaulted when I read books that begin like this: I scour bookstore shelves and sample pages until I find books that don’t start out with “Boris lay in a pool of his own blood,” or some such nonsense. If I wanted to read a boys’ adventure novel, a Heinlein juvie, I’d go out and get one of those. I almost never want to read books like that, alas. And it sucks to be me, because I haven’t seen a lot of quiet books making it big (or making it at all) lately. Of course, these vertical takeoffs could all just be false fronts, like the fronts of American frontier town stores-- made to look big and impressive and tall, when actually the interior of the place was little more than a shack. Maybe some of those books that start out with a bang get more humble after Chapter One, but I suspect they really just get shabby.
I remember breathing a huge sigh of relief when I first opened Peter S. Beagle’s Tamsin, a lush ghost story that kept me captivated for hours and which I have read again more than once. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman was an equally welcome change: I discovered it long after it was written and was lucky enough to acquire the illustrated novel; the other versions just aren’t the same. Your mileage may vary, standard disclaimers apply.
What does this have to do with Mr. Faulkner’s suggestion to “read, read, read?” Everything. Do it, but recognise what you like and what you don’t like. Know what you want to sound like, and read that (but not exclusively that). Don’t be afraid to say what you don’t like, but careful when you call what you don’t like crap; there are people out there who absolutely love the stuff you hate-- and it’s their right to love it, but you don’t have to read it (you certainly don’t have to finish it!), no matter what Mr. Faulkner says.
04 June 2007
"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."
Jack London said that. Jack London wrote The Call of the Wild, which I had to read in middle school like everybody else. I don’t remember much about the book except that it had some vague business to do with wolves, but this quote, the first one in A Writer’s Notebook, always makes me happy. Lots of people who write writing pages use this quote somewhere, but I am not sure how many of them really understand it. Obviously, there are many ways to interpret the things other people have said, and Mr. London isn’t here to defend himself, but I interpret this to mean we must find our own inspiration.
Jack London was that rarity of rarities, the artist who is both profitable in his own lifetime and remembered well after his death. Like other writers who share that distinction (Shakespeare, for example, or Charles Dickens), he wrote popular literature in a way that sold while still managing to create great art. I don’t think it’s possible to do that by wandering around hoping the muse is going to drop an inspiration water balloon on your head.
One of the things I try to get across to people who ask me about writing or any other creative enterprise is that this idea that creative endeavours are somehow magical events that only occur when some goddess or muse shines upon you seems ridiculous to me and always has, although I am a religious person who is capable of believing in things beyond the self.
I also believe in my own creative power. There’s no buzzing fairy out there dragging her wand of inspiration through the night and letting the sparkles fall where they may: that’s my creativity, my ability, thank you very much. I have occasionally bemuse people by admitting that it’s possible for me to sit down at my desk, say, “I will write a [story/song/poem/novel] now,” and just be able to begin. I think it helps to imagine a world in which that kind of magical inspiration were possible, and if we imagine it hard enough, it can come to pass for us. But chalking it all up to some detached power handing out ideas for artwork like lollipops to the kids who’ve been good at the dentist? I don’t think so.
When an inspiration “comes” to you, when an idea pushes its way into your consciousness and won’t let go, don’t think about what a magical experience that was: try to predict it or create circumstances that will make it come about more often! Remember, our ancestors were amazed and fearful when they saw eclipses and comets-- things we can now predict and explain. Inspiration is predictable and manipulable. Magic is what you make of inspiration.
Jack London was that rarity of rarities, the artist who is both profitable in his own lifetime and remembered well after his death. Like other writers who share that distinction (Shakespeare, for example, or Charles Dickens), he wrote popular literature in a way that sold while still managing to create great art. I don’t think it’s possible to do that by wandering around hoping the muse is going to drop an inspiration water balloon on your head.
One of the things I try to get across to people who ask me about writing or any other creative enterprise is that this idea that creative endeavours are somehow magical events that only occur when some goddess or muse shines upon you seems ridiculous to me and always has, although I am a religious person who is capable of believing in things beyond the self.
I also believe in my own creative power. There’s no buzzing fairy out there dragging her wand of inspiration through the night and letting the sparkles fall where they may: that’s my creativity, my ability, thank you very much. I have occasionally bemuse people by admitting that it’s possible for me to sit down at my desk, say, “I will write a [story/song/poem/novel] now,” and just be able to begin. I think it helps to imagine a world in which that kind of magical inspiration were possible, and if we imagine it hard enough, it can come to pass for us. But chalking it all up to some detached power handing out ideas for artwork like lollipops to the kids who’ve been good at the dentist? I don’t think so.
When an inspiration “comes” to you, when an idea pushes its way into your consciousness and won’t let go, don’t think about what a magical experience that was: try to predict it or create circumstances that will make it come about more often! Remember, our ancestors were amazed and fearful when they saw eclipses and comets-- things we can now predict and explain. Inspiration is predictable and manipulable. Magic is what you make of inspiration.
Where do you go for inspiration?
Yesterday, my husband and I went through all the books on two of our massive bookshelves, and we managed to identify enough books that we didn't think we'd ever want to read or read again to fill four boxes. (I said the bookshelves were massive, didn't I? Wait 'til we get to the paperbacks!) During this task, we found things we had forgotten about, found things we'd been looking for, found things we didn't know we needed, and laughed at stuff we'd never want to look at again. I do feel the need to inform you that we did keep a couple of books that were just too bad to throw away (we're the same way with films)!
So much of our lives' histories were present in the books we went through. We identified closed chapters in our lives that we'd want to remember, and we kept those books. Other things, things that meant less to us or were only important for a very brief period in our lives (I kept The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, for example, but got rid of What to Expect When You're Expecting), those things were put into boxes. Soon, we'll donate those boxes to charity shops or libraries, after we've given friends a chance to come round and see if they want anything.
One of the books that came to light yesterday was A Writer's Notebook, copyright 1984 by Running Press, which has been absorbed into a larger press conglomerate and probably doesn't remember this book at all. In fact, it was a fad book, a cheaply put together "blank book" with fancy, textured paper. I never wrote a word in it. It cost $4.95 in 1984, and you can buy it today for £1 or so via Alibris. But I kept it, through all the years and all the moves. Why did I keep it?
I kept it because on every page, there is a different quote about writing.
Now, I know you can do a web search for quotes about writing any day of the week and come up with more pithy writing advice in two minutes flat than you could ever manage to read, even if you disallowed redundant results. But there's something about thumbing through this book that I must have had since I was seventeen or eighteen years old, and choosing the first quote I come to, that just gives me a little thrill.
What happens when I try it now? I get this:
Each author is in every essential a foreigner but lately emigrated from the one land which is comprehensible to him. --James Branch Cabell (1879-1958), American novelist and essayist
A foreigner but lately emigrated from the one land which is comprehensible to him. Do you feel that way, when you're deep in the landscape of your current project, and the phone rings, and you have a hard time taking yourself out of your world, the one you're writing about, even if it's a twenty-one line poem? At worst, I suppose that means that as writers we live in our heads. At best, it's a metaphor about life and work and how real those worlds we live in when we're writing become to us.
It makes me want to go into my world again, even though the clock says I have only about an hour and a half before my son gets home from school. The trick is to know how to conjure up that world and enter it whenever we need to, even if it's only for a little while, to get a little bit done, or to put in a detail that it wouldn't do to forget.
But how do you create that temple-in-an-instant? How do you call it down for just thirty minutes or even less, when you might be interrupted or called away? Well, there are a million little tricks, aren't there? Everybody says, "Use music," which works for most things. There's a bird singing outside my window, and that's a good one. Staring at the tree outside my window helps, too. Evocative smells, like baking bread or a particular flower essence, those are also good. In a world where so many things conspire to distract us and we don't always have the freedom to just get away from it all, being able to recreate bits of that lush world inside our heads is sometimes the best creative inspiration there is.
How do you remind yourself that your creative mind is only waiting for you to head down that path?
So much of our lives' histories were present in the books we went through. We identified closed chapters in our lives that we'd want to remember, and we kept those books. Other things, things that meant less to us or were only important for a very brief period in our lives (I kept The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, for example, but got rid of What to Expect When You're Expecting), those things were put into boxes. Soon, we'll donate those boxes to charity shops or libraries, after we've given friends a chance to come round and see if they want anything.
One of the books that came to light yesterday was A Writer's Notebook, copyright 1984 by Running Press, which has been absorbed into a larger press conglomerate and probably doesn't remember this book at all. In fact, it was a fad book, a cheaply put together "blank book" with fancy, textured paper. I never wrote a word in it. It cost $4.95 in 1984, and you can buy it today for £1 or so via Alibris. But I kept it, through all the years and all the moves. Why did I keep it?
I kept it because on every page, there is a different quote about writing.
Now, I know you can do a web search for quotes about writing any day of the week and come up with more pithy writing advice in two minutes flat than you could ever manage to read, even if you disallowed redundant results. But there's something about thumbing through this book that I must have had since I was seventeen or eighteen years old, and choosing the first quote I come to, that just gives me a little thrill.
What happens when I try it now? I get this:
Each author is in every essential a foreigner but lately emigrated from the one land which is comprehensible to him. --James Branch Cabell (1879-1958), American novelist and essayist
A foreigner but lately emigrated from the one land which is comprehensible to him. Do you feel that way, when you're deep in the landscape of your current project, and the phone rings, and you have a hard time taking yourself out of your world, the one you're writing about, even if it's a twenty-one line poem? At worst, I suppose that means that as writers we live in our heads. At best, it's a metaphor about life and work and how real those worlds we live in when we're writing become to us.
It makes me want to go into my world again, even though the clock says I have only about an hour and a half before my son gets home from school. The trick is to know how to conjure up that world and enter it whenever we need to, even if it's only for a little while, to get a little bit done, or to put in a detail that it wouldn't do to forget.
But how do you create that temple-in-an-instant? How do you call it down for just thirty minutes or even less, when you might be interrupted or called away? Well, there are a million little tricks, aren't there? Everybody says, "Use music," which works for most things. There's a bird singing outside my window, and that's a good one. Staring at the tree outside my window helps, too. Evocative smells, like baking bread or a particular flower essence, those are also good. In a world where so many things conspire to distract us and we don't always have the freedom to just get away from it all, being able to recreate bits of that lush world inside our heads is sometimes the best creative inspiration there is.
How do you remind yourself that your creative mind is only waiting for you to head down that path?
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