Cruising the block

I made mention of the guilt writers can feel when not writing last time I was here. Was that really two weeks ago? Time flies when you're having fun. Or when you're dealing with edits from the seventh circle of hell.

The fact is, I can very easily not write. In fact, I am something of an expert. I will seize any excuse not to throw words at the screen and sometimes it's as if there are traps all around my desk preventing me from even reaching it, like Indiana Jones trying to get to the golden figurine at the start of 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.' 

And I don't even have a bullwhip.

What is also a fact is that when I don't write - if, say, I abandon all hope of getting anything cogent down and I retire to the couch to watch a movie (for instance, Raiders) - the guilt kicks in.

You see, writing is a job and I know I should be doing it. I can make all the excuses I want but in the end I see them for the imposters they are.

The thing is, there are days when I just cannot string words together. That does not mean I have the dreaded writer's block.

I don't believe in writers' block. The Late Terry Pratchett once said, "There is no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write." My apologies to anyone in the Golden State who is reading this. I'm sure Mr Pratchett was wrong.

Philip Pullman said, "Do plumbers get plumber’s block? What would you think of a plumber who used that as an excuse not to do any work that day?"

Whenever I feel my little hand fluttering to my forehead and I sink onto a chaise longue bewailing the fact that my muse has deserted me, I remind myself that I'm a writer and writers write. Right?

By the way, I have never actually done anything like the above. I'm from Glasgow, the toughest city in Scotland, and such behaviour would be viewed with contempt and quite possibly an admonishment to pull oneself together. Swearing and perhaps physical encouragement may also be employed.

So, no writers block but that doesn't mean I don't find myself stuck. There can be many reasons for this, principally the fact that I am not a plotter. I am not even a plantster, as I read here on Type M last week. I am very much a pantster and as such I hit many patches where, frankly, I don't know what the hell is happening.

I wrote around 30,000 to 40,000 words of my book The Dead Don't Boogie before I had to force myself stop and decide what it was actually about. I had all kinds of mayhem going on in Glasgow (it really is a relatively peaceful city despite being the toughest) but with no clear notion as to why. 

So I took myself and my dog off onto the moors to let the Scottish elements blow away the cobwebs. And sometimes just about everything else. The next day, I had a germ of an idea and I was able to complete the draft, then retro fit what I'd already written. 

When you hit a block in the road you either drive round it or, if you are Indiana Jones, drive through it. Sometimes you have to go back and find a different route.

I have come to a shuddering halt with at least two books and could not power through, go round or go back. I began filled with enthusiasm and I knew where I wanted to go but had reached a point where I was questioning why I was actually writing this damn thing. They were examples of an author writing the wrong book. I didn't know it when I began but I sure knew it by the time I found my words, ideas and interest dried up. I wasn't blocked. I just didn't care anymore.

That wouldn't happen to a plotter, I'm sure, but try as I might I don't have the discipline or the patience to go that route.

Here's the thing though - I still feel guilty that I didn't complete those stories. Maybe I will one day, when the time is right.

Maybe how to write a novel?

Aline's posts usher in the week at Type M and they always get me thinking. This week's post about Muriel Spark's writing process was no different. Writing a novel is damn hard work, and lonely as well. Novels are not written by committee, or in brain-storming sessions, or in support groups. They are written by one lonely soul sitting down in front of a blank page, taking a deep breath, beating back the doubts, shoving aside the distractions, and getting down to work. This will be repeated day after day, at times with ease and at other times with hair-pulling frustration, until the story is finished.

For most of us, it's an imperfect process. Some of us outline, some prefer to wing it. Some plunge ahead to the end, leaving a trail of loose ends, plot holes, and non-sequiturs in our wake to be fixed once the story figures itself out. Others tidy up as we go along, re-reading and editing the work from yesterday before moving on to today. Many of us do a little of this and a little of that, depending on our mood and on the flow of ideas at the time. Writing a novel sometimes feels like travelling down a river. Ever-changing, full of surprises, and scary and exhilarating at different times. Waterfalls, rapids, eddies, whirlpools, lazy meanders, logjams... And and always the inexorable tugging of the current that is the story in our head.

Along this journey, most of us run aground or get swept off course many times, and end up spinning around until some idea catches us and pulls us forward again. It's a rare writer who sits down and writes a story from beginning to end with barely a hesitation or false step. So I was astonished to learn Muriel Spark's technique. She spent a year thinking about the story, and presumably when she's got it all thought out, she opened her notebooks and wrote the whole story in about six weeks. With barely any need for revision.

The only think she and I have in common is that in the end, we both take just a little over a year to write a book. I could not imagine delaying the start of writing for a whole year while I thought up the whole story. Once I get the initial idea for a story and can picture the opening few scenes, I'm itching to dive in. Furthermore, I don't think I could visualize the whole story while standing on the riverbank far upstream. Ideas come to me as I am writing, and as I get closer to each scene, the ideas sharpen and often change shape. The unexpected happens. Characters change and grow richer. A element of setting which I had thought was minor suddenly changes the outcome of a scene.

For this reason, I can't imagine finishing the story with no loose ends to tidy up and no characters to reshape. Rewrites all enrich the book. They deepen the story, cut out the extraneous, and bring the story into clearer focus. A book without rewrites would be incomplete. It's certainly easier for us to do revisions in the age of computers than in the days of notebooks, and perhaps now we writers are guilty of too much editorial fiddling and fussing. But rarely do the words flow so cleanly and smoothly as to require no improvement. I write my first draft longhand on yellow pads of paper, and each page is a nearly indecipherable mess of crossed out words, arrows, "insert next page", scribbled additions in the margins, and so on. I rewrite on the fly.

Muriel's method sounds much calmer and easier on the nerves. But we all find the method that works best for us. It's likely much messier and more torturous than hers, but in the end, it's the only way we know.