For the last two years--on and off, but mostly off--I have been trying to write a novel. No big deal, you may think. People write novels all the time. They've been doing it since Thomas Malory penned (quilled?) Morte d'Arthur some time in the 15th century.
There are libraries full of novels so it can't be too difficult, right? I mean, Newt Gingrich has written several novels and he's not exactly Tolstoy. Stephen King seems to churn them out all the time like they're the Yellow Pages being dropped in your driveway. Small children are writing novels. Prisoners in Egypt are writing novels. People who are dying are writing novels. Hell, there are even ghost writers out there.
If writing a novel is such a relatively simple task, can anyone please explain why I am having such difficulty putting pen to paper and coming up with some Pulitzer Prize-winning novel? OK, maybe not the Pulitzer but certainly the Man Booker or the National Book Award or even the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. I have all the prizes figured out. I am successfully envisioning the awards ceremonies. It is the writing part of the whole process that seems to be eluding me.
What is even more galling is that people who grew up speaking Russian, Igbo, Tagalog, Pushto, Mandarin, Korean and Yoruba (to name but a few), are all publishing beautifully written novels in the English language. They are crowding out us poor native English speakers.
I am reading a remarkable, compulsively readable and, yes, beautifully written novel right now by Diane Wei Liang called The Eye of Jade. She grew up in a labor camp in a remote region of China. Well, I grew up in a remote part of Wales so maybe there's hope for me yet. Pity about the labor camp part--but I did go to boarding school in Shropshire where flogging and other redemptive punishments were de rigeur. Does that count? Will this more moderate form of hardship pave a smooth path into the novel writing business for me?
I have a great idea for a novel. I can't actually tell you about it in any detail. However, I can tell you that it delves into Chinese politics, reveals skullduggery in the Vatican, pursues strange underground phenomena in France, charts a new path for mankind and ponders on the capacity of the human heart to soar and then, in one majestic arc, plunge back to earth in flames.
I have the characters, I have the plot line and I have the beginning, middle and end. Whole chapters have been written. At first, they seem fine. Upon re-reading them, they have to be discarded as unworkable or gauche. I have everything but the ability to make my novel come to life. My poor characters just can't get off the ground. The only one who has truly come alive is the evil Cardinal Koestler. I have modeled him on a former boss of mine. Maybe I should create more loathsome characters?
That's where this blog comes in. Born of utter desperation, it is a cunning little ploy to keep me writing while enduring the most terrible bout of writer's--I can hardly say the word--BLOCK. This ploy (what a wonderful word) certainly has me fooled. I have been happily pounding away for the last ten minutes as though this was not some highly developed form of procrastination. My novel languishes but I am busy writing. All's well with the world.
Writing a blog while awaiting novelistic inspiration makes a lot of sense in a perverse sort of way. Published authors are always telling us hacks that in order to be a writer, you have to write. It doesn't matter if it is absolute drivel or worse, just write, keep on writing--even during acute bouts of writer's...oh my Lord...not again....ummm...BLOCK.
That is why the URL of this blog is, in part, waiting2write. This is what I am doing while I am waiting to really write. It is like having a quick snifter before you start drinking forty or fifty pints of beer. Of course, some people never get past the first few snifters and keel over. I hope that I am made of sterner stuff. I fully intend to get into all those frothy pints in due course. Just one more quick snifter and I'm off.
Naturally, I have read many books on the art (pathology?) of writing--what works and what doesn't. But Mark Twain, Stephen King, Hilary Mantel, Elmore Leonard, Will Self and others have a lot of conflicting advice to give you. Their advice has obviously worked for them; but I fear we must all find our own recipes for success by trial and error.
Inspired by Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, The Guardian newspaper summarized some of the advice given by Elmore, and other modern authors, as follows: "get an accountant, abstain from sex and similes, cut, rewrite and then cut and rewrite again--if all else fails, pray".
I have an accountant. Not sure about the sex thing and would have to look up similes--I always mix them up with metaphors. I know all about cutting, pasting and rewriting. I was a lawyer for 30 years. I have prayed long and hard, believe me, but maybe prayer doesn't work all that well for lapsed atheists.
In my book, (not my novel--it's just a phrase), if all else fails, you have to BLOG. Come to think of it, blog and block sound remarkably alike. Maybe they are related after all.
Will the BLOCK go on forever? Unfortunately, it doesn't look good. I read some of the points that author Anne Enright made in the same Guardian newspaper article mentioned above. She started with this: "The first 12 years are worst". Ouch.
So, I have started this blog in the hope that by writing, I will work my way slowly, surely and effortlessly towards my great novel. I hope that my little ploy works and that William Faulkner's advice is sound.
In the next blog, I will tell you what I am actually going to be writing about. I mean, you can't write about writer's block forever. Unless, of course, you are truly, madly, deeply, absolutely, utterly and irrevocably...dare I say it...BLOCKED.
If writing a novel is such a relatively simple task, can anyone please explain why I am having such difficulty putting pen to paper and coming up with some Pulitzer Prize-winning novel? OK, maybe not the Pulitzer but certainly the Man Booker or the National Book Award or even the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. I have all the prizes figured out. I am successfully envisioning the awards ceremonies. It is the writing part of the whole process that seems to be eluding me.
What is even more galling is that people who grew up speaking Russian, Igbo, Tagalog, Pushto, Mandarin, Korean and Yoruba (to name but a few), are all publishing beautifully written novels in the English language. They are crowding out us poor native English speakers.
I am reading a remarkable, compulsively readable and, yes, beautifully written novel right now by Diane Wei Liang called The Eye of Jade. She grew up in a labor camp in a remote region of China. Well, I grew up in a remote part of Wales so maybe there's hope for me yet. Pity about the labor camp part--but I did go to boarding school in Shropshire where flogging and other redemptive punishments were de rigeur. Does that count? Will this more moderate form of hardship pave a smooth path into the novel writing business for me?
I have the characters, I have the plot line and I have the beginning, middle and end. Whole chapters have been written. At first, they seem fine. Upon re-reading them, they have to be discarded as unworkable or gauche. I have everything but the ability to make my novel come to life. My poor characters just can't get off the ground. The only one who has truly come alive is the evil Cardinal Koestler. I have modeled him on a former boss of mine. Maybe I should create more loathsome characters?
That's where this blog comes in. Born of utter desperation, it is a cunning little ploy to keep me writing while enduring the most terrible bout of writer's--I can hardly say the word--BLOCK. This ploy (what a wonderful word) certainly has me fooled. I have been happily pounding away for the last ten minutes as though this was not some highly developed form of procrastination. My novel languishes but I am busy writing. All's well with the world.
Writing a blog while awaiting novelistic inspiration makes a lot of sense in a perverse sort of way. Published authors are always telling us hacks that in order to be a writer, you have to write. It doesn't matter if it is absolute drivel or worse, just write, keep on writing--even during acute bouts of writer's...oh my Lord...not again....ummm...BLOCK.
Naturally, I have read many books on the art (pathology?) of writing--what works and what doesn't. But Mark Twain, Stephen King, Hilary Mantel, Elmore Leonard, Will Self and others have a lot of conflicting advice to give you. Their advice has obviously worked for them; but I fear we must all find our own recipes for success by trial and error.
Inspired by Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, The Guardian newspaper summarized some of the advice given by Elmore, and other modern authors, as follows: "get an accountant, abstain from sex and similes, cut, rewrite and then cut and rewrite again--if all else fails, pray".
I have an accountant. Not sure about the sex thing and would have to look up similes--I always mix them up with metaphors. I know all about cutting, pasting and rewriting. I was a lawyer for 30 years. I have prayed long and hard, believe me, but maybe prayer doesn't work all that well for lapsed atheists.
So, I have started this blog in the hope that by writing, I will work my way slowly, surely and effortlessly towards my great novel. I hope that my little ploy works and that William Faulkner's advice is sound.
In the next blog, I will tell you what I am actually going to be writing about. I mean, you can't write about writer's block forever. Unless, of course, you are truly, madly, deeply, absolutely, utterly and irrevocably...dare I say it...BLOCKED.
I am pretty sure I have read this one before. Perhaps in the printed book of blog posts you gave me. But this is phenomenal! SO we’ll written, dad. PLEASE send it to the Washington post or a writer’s journal to get published!
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