The fiction acquisitions editor at a prominent UK publishing house once casually told me that if the voice of a novel manuscript was totally convincing, he could forgive almost anything else that might be wrong with it.
“Writing a novel — actually picking the words and filling in paragraphs — is a tremendous pain in the ass”
Writing a novel – actually picking the words and filling in paragraphs – is a tremendous pain in the ass. Now that TV’s so good and the Internet is an endless forest of distraction, it’s damn near impossible. That should be taken into account when ranking the all-time greats. Somebody like Charles Dickens, for example, who had nothing better to do except eat mutton and attend public hangings, should get very little credit.
“If I’m writing something set on Mars, or in a Victorian submarine under the sea, or about fake spirit mediums in World War Two, some part of me really feels like I’m doing the work I’m meant to be doing”
Why aren’t I letting myself have the same freedom as a writer that I grant myself as a reader? Why don’t I let myself write what I love, regardless of whatever the apparent genre of it might be?
I’m fascinated by authors who can plant themselves in all kinds of terrain. Russell Hoban is one example. Michael Chabon is another. Here he is talking about the experience of — and reasoning behind — his involvement in the movie adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom adventures. (Coincidentally I’m posting this while watching a video from Neil Gaimain’s Wheeler Centre appearance in which he talks about his concern at being pigeonholed.)
“And per se and”
The editorial team at Hardie Grant Egmont’s ‘Ampersand’ project have started compiling some handy links and resources concerning ye olde craft of storytellinge. As you will no doubt discover, they take this sort of thing seriously (and would probably never use a phrase like ‘ye olde craft of storytelling’).
“One of the reasons I always liked the idea of being a writer was that it meant I would never have reason to speak in public”
The fellow who does the dishes, forgets people’s names, ferociously bites his nails and eats porridge for breakfast — the everyday me, in other words — and the one who performs the slightly dreamy act of writing are, subtly, different. The everyday me doesn’t actually narrate my works of fiction. Instead it is the writerly version of myself — the one with access to the (hopefully) best possible word, who can spend months revisiting sentences to ensure they are just right, who can see the structure of the story being told, who understands his characters; the one who rearranges.
“You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment”
Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles. The problem is structural; it is insoluble; it is why no one can ever write this book.
From a galvanising 1989 piece by Annie Dillard for the New York Times. A vivid, powerful expression of the art of writing if ever I’ve read one.
Martin wants, Douglas wants, Carolyn wants, Arthur wants, Nancy wants
A new series of the BBC Radio 4 sitcom Cabin Pressure began earlier this month, and in his blog post introducing the first episode, writer John Finnemore shares a page from his notebook, offering a fascinating glimpse into the process of constructing a half-hour comedy. I especially like the emphasis on what each of the main characters wants, the ‘value at stake’ and the ‘question’ of the episode.
“An author needs to keep some kind of exclusion zone round his mental processes”
Do I wish (Don) DeLillo was on Twitter? No, that would be grotesque: the worst thing that could ever happen to my relationship with his books.
Boxer, Beetle author Ned Beauman in an interview with Ideas Tap. I agree with this in part: writers who trade in a sort of aloof authorial demeanour or carefully-constructed mystique will not be particularly well suited to broadcasting or interacting on Twitter. On the other hand, Margaret Atwood — a writer one could hardly accuse of being frivolous — apparently enjoys a certain repartee with her Twitter followers.
As for the question of Twitter’s impact on productivity, you can no more expect to get any writing done if you’ve got Twitter open than you would if you set up a typewriter in a middle of a party. But few sensible people would advocate that one should never go to parties.
I hope none of the above reads as though I’m being dismissive of Beauman (from the evidence of Boxer, Beetle he is an exceptional writer) — or that I’m being precious or defensive about Twitter, for that matter.
“You have to be able to survive it all”
(E)very word one writes is just as important as every other word, (the) ones that make it out into the world, cannot exist without the ones that came before (…)
“Why is blank verse such a promising medium for dialogue?”
Why is blank verse such a promising medium for dialogue? Probably it is because the form conveys a slight heightening to the material through its recurrent sound-patterns, holding our attention without distracting us by its artifice. Our attention thus engaged, we are reminded of the collaboratively creative nature of conversation, which is human drama in itself… Even if the language (of blank verse) is colloquial, the meter formalizes it and, in the way of many esthetic devices, entices us even as it distances us from the dialogue we are overhearing. We are carried by the rhythms as the speakers are. Because each speaker sustains similar rhythms, we feel the intensity of their connection to each other: they are in some sense on the same wavelength, even if what they are exchanging is mottled with misunderstandings. Their speech is the way they reveal themselves, and blank verse, in its unobtrusive though stylized way, draws our attention to disclosures of character.
“It helped me see more clearly what was on the page … Instead of being confronted with a page of 350 words, it might have 50 words, or 100, and I could focus more clearly on words and sentences.”
Apparently DeLillo continues to use the technique. Entire forests tremble with fear every time he begins a new book. (Luckily the new one is a novella.)
Elizabeth Bear captures the pain and insanity of writing with an animated GIF showing her edits, rewrites and total redrafts of a single paragraph over an hour. Made me feel both elated and depressed; the first because I could take comfort in shared pain, the second because I realised how much of my life I have expended doing just this.
