The incredible growing and shrinking novel.

I have finished my novel and sent it off to publisher and agent.

Hooray!

Some time ago I asked readers of this blog whether they are a taker-outer or a putter-inner. I have recently proved to myself what I already knew - I am definitely a putter-inner. When I finished the first draft of Magpie Hall, it was 74,300 words long. When I finished the second draft, it was considerably longer. I am not someone who throws everything at the page and then has to cut it back, like topiary, to find its form. Instead I throw down what I need, then go back and expand things.

Now it seems that I am both a putter-inner and a taker-outer. My final draft, even though I added a couple of scenes, is now shorter than my second draft. Turns out there was a lot of fat to trim.

I also posted once about the perfect novel that I had in my head. I don't know if what I have written is quite what I had imagined I would, but that is not surprising really -- things get lost in translation from brain to page, and we are limited by our own abilities.

My friend and fellow writer-blogger Marianne drew my attention to this fabulous article by Ann Patchett. It was written years go, and I'm astounded that I've never seen it before. Go and read it: it's funny and apt for anyone working on their first, second or tenth novel. As if in direct response to my 'perfect novel' post, Patchett has this to say:

"Somewhere around Page 80 I will accept that I am neither smart enough nor talented enough to put all the light and movement and beauty I had hoped for onto paper, and so I will have to settle for what I am capable of pulling off."

With my finished novel I have settled for what I am capable of pulling off, but I hope that it is better than that sounds! Check out what she says about wanting to plagiarise your own novels...

66,600

That's the number currently displayed on my picometer (in the bar to the right). By the time you read this, the number may have gone up, but for now I am reminded that 66,600 was the exact number of words of the first novel I ever wrote. And no, I'm not talking about The Sound of Butterflies.

It was called Birds of Passage, and I wrote it for the MA in Creative Writing at Victoria University (the IIML). It wasn't published; it never will be published, and I am unlikely to mine much material from it for future books.

Don't get me wrong; it wasn't a bad book, but ultimately, it wasn't the kind of book that I wanted to write. My big epiphany came half way through it when I realised that the kind of books I should be writing are not the ones I thought I should be writing, but the kinds of books I like to read. That was when the idea for TSOB was born, but I wanted to finish the job at hand first. I needed to write a novel in nine months for the MA, and knew that TSOB would take me several years.

Loosely, it was about the young kiwi OE experience. How so many people of my generation drift off to the UK to see the world, and have a slight yearning to discover their roots all over those fair isles. In the case of my novel's protagonist, it was Ireland, where her estranged father lived. She travelled around Ireland with him, getting to know him and a few family skeletons. The writing of the novel coincided with a trip I made with my own (non-estranged) father; in fact, it was the upcoming trip that gave me the idea for the book in the first place. But the protagonist was not me, and the father was definitely not my father. I often thought that if I'd had it published, people would possibly buy it to get an insight into my own father. They would be severely disappointed. Either that or they'd be misguidedly excited - the father in my novel turned out to be gay, which was the reason for the estrangement. At the end of course they made their peace, on top of Croagh Patrick in County Mayo, a set piece that I'm still rather proud of and may have to turn into a short story one day. 

If I'm honest, I would say that if I hadn't written that book and someone else had, I would have picked it up in a bookstore and put it straight back down again. Although it's a novel that would have reflected my own experiences, I realised that in the end, that's not what I want to read about, so how could I write those kinds of books? I want to read books that aren't about my experience. And those are the books I would like to write as well. The truth is that my writing is better when I can step outside of myself and use my imagination.

I would like to say that I stuck it nobly in the drawer as soon as I'd finished it, but I did try a few publishers, and received very encouraging rejections. I am so glad that it was never published. The Sound of Butterflies had a much better impact for a first novel than Birds of Passage ever would have. So my thanks go out to those editors that turned it down. You know who you are.

Festival, aspiring writers and the joy of the unmarked page.

Husband has taken son to creche on the way to work today, so have a couple of hours more Friday than I usually do (they left very early - I don't usually get it together this early, hence the huge amount of extra time). I'm fighting the urge to go back to bed, to be honest. Instead I thought I'd take the opportunity to update my sadly neglected blog.

I had a wonderful weekend at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival. My plane was delayed on Friday night so I missed the annual party held by my publishers (bit sad about that one), and missed most of Richard Dawkins, but arrived just in time to see him present the Royal Society prize for science writing to my talented and beautiful sister-in-law, Rebecca Priestley, for The Awa Book of New Zealand Science. Very pleased and proud I was. It was odd seeing it being presented by a huge man on a screen (Dawkins via satellite).

The rest of the weekend was an intense round of sessions, five or more per day I think, and catching up with all manner of friends, family and colleagues in the gaps between. I won't go into it too much - others have written about it better and more thoroughly than I have (here, here, here and here), but I will say that the highlights for me were Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche and Monica Ali, both warm and engaging and thought-provoking with beautiful readings that left me wanting more (I confess I often nod off at readings and prefer to hear writers talk, but these two were an exception). The success of these sessions was in no small part due to the excellent chairing by Paula Morris, whose energy and intellectual capacity always astounds me. Chairing can be exhausting and challenging, and far harder than it looks, with hours and hours of preparation time (and that doesn't even include all the books you have to read), so I take my hat off to her for chairing three sessions with important writes and doing a wonderful job, as well as appearing as a writer in two sessions. And she even finds time to write books. To digress for a moment, I probably shouldn't point this out but I'm going to: Paula and I wrote our first books together in 2001 during the MA in Creative Writing at the IIML, and since then she has had three novels and one collection of short stories published, with a YA novel due out in August. I am hoping to have my second novel published at the end of the year. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Another session I enjoyed was the 'Emerging Stars' (no pressure!) with Eleanor Catton, Bridget van der Zijpp and Anna Taylor. It was a great idea on the behalf of the organisers to make this a free session, as it introduced new writers to people who might not otherwise have taken a gamble with their money. Sessions with new writers always attract aspiring writers, so there was the inevitable questions from the audience of "Did you get an agent first or did you just send it into your publisher?" and "Did you sign your international rights over to your publisher?". It always amuses me how aspiring writers (and I still count myself among that group) always want to know things like this, rather than questiosn about how to write well (this has been my experience speaking to first year creative writing students as well). People, it doesn't matter how many agents and editors you sumbit your work to, you've got to put in the hard yards and learn how to write as well as you can first. That should be your priority. And try and enjoy the process of improving your writing for the sake of it.

Now I'm back home and trying to write as much as I can. I have about 10,000 words to go for a complete draft of the new novel and have possibly settled on a title. Because of the way I work, although it will be a complete draft, it won't be a first draft as such. I tend to work things out as I go along, and the first half of the book is pretty polished as I wrote and rewrote until I got the voice right. Once the voice comes, it can seemingly just write itself. This novel has a contemporary story and an historical story. Unlike with The Sound of Butterflies, which I wrote from start to finish in the way it is read (alternating between two different time periods), I have completed the historical section and am now tackling the end (and the middle and all the bits in between) of the (much more complex) contemporary section. To get myself in the right frame of mind, I started at the beginning, picking up the printouts I have been carrying around with me for nine months of what I have written so far and went through and incorporated all the notes that I have scribbled over those pages during the that time. I can't tell you how satisfying I found it to get to the end of one chapter and reprint it, all clean and beautiful, knowing it was as good as I can get it at this point. I have five more of these to go, and then it's the home stretch, pulling all those loose threads together and writing those final chapters. I am on track, so far, and have scheduled panic and anxiety for six weeks time. Before that, it is not allowed.

The hare and the tortoise.

I was having a conversation with a novelist friend of mine the other day who mentioned that she is unhappy with how her novel has turned out despite numerous rewrites. She (and her publisher) have given herself three months to give it a final go to get it right. I also have a deadline which is a little over three months away, and it seems that our novels will be hitting the public at about the same time ("Let's feud!" she said).

Feuding aside, it got me thinking about just how different each writer's process is but how we all eventually get there in the end. This novelist and I both started our novels at around the same time. In fact I started a novel that I have since abandoned. Everything seemed to be going so well for her with it and I confess I felt a little jealous. She has always been so disciplined and always seemed to enjoy the first draft process. She was very much of the "just write 1000 words a day and you have a draft in three months" school, whereas I have always aimed for 1000 words a day and failed miserably.

It doesn't matter how many words I write, it seems it takes as long as it takes and I can either work it out on the page and write copious amounts of words, or I can write fewer words and work it out in my head. At the moment I have two and a half days to write, plus another couple of hours on Wednesday afternoons when the toddler is at my mother's house and I sneak off to her local library.

(Aside: sometimes those two hours are as, if not more, productive than the full days I have. I usually just put my head down and write in a stream of consciousness fever, then the next day go back and either find 700 words of rubbish or 700 gems.)

I can't help but wonder whether, if I had more time to write, the book would get written quicker. I suspect not. I think it's just going to take as long as it takes for the words to ripen and fall onto the page - if I were to force them out at 1000 words per day, seven days per week, I would inevitably end up throwing many of those words away. This way, it's like a steady drip, and by a designated date (hopefully within my deadline), the bucket of the novel will be full. To carry on the metaphor, if I were to pour great gushes into the bucket, I would inevitably end up spilling half of it on the floor.

What can I say? I am the tortoise, at first jealous of the hare's lightning pace and quick mind, but ultimately I think we will get there at the same time.

The joys of self-employment.

One of the things that I have noticed about self-employment is that, while I get to work my own hours, it also means that public holidays often don't mean a thing except perhaps a mild inconvenience. Case in point: my son's creche is closed today through Tuesday. Friday and Tuesday are my two full writing days in the week, with one half day on Thursday. I know I should just relax and use the time to spend with my family, but I have a deadline and a momentum to keep up.

Luckily for me, husband has taken son away for a few hours. Unluckily for me, who finds it impossible to work at home because of the mountains of housework beckoning, the libraries are all shut today. Luckily, I can always work in a cafe. Unluckily, they are very busy and everything costs 15% more due to the public holiday surcharge. (Incidentally, when I worked in hospitality, before the Employment Contracts Act, we used to get paid extra on weekends and public holidays, but the restaurants and cafes sucked up the extra. Why? Because take a look around: businesses boom on those days. They easily used to make enough extra money to cover the extra wages. I resent places charging me for them to pay their staff fairly when they are pulling in extra anyway.)

For some reason Christchurch cafes seem to more expensive than elsewhere. We long ago stopped going out for weekend brunch when it ended up costing us $50+ for a modest breakfast for two and a fluffy/muffin combo for toddler - add 15% on top of that and there goes our week's food budget. At first I thought it was just the state of everything, food costing more etc, but a return to Wellington proved it was otherwise. It's just Christchurch. Who knows why?

And of course when you are at home with children, it's hard work whether it's a normal day or a holiday. Same with when you're a writer with a deadline.

However, I shall be indulging in more than the usual amount of chocolate and taking the weekend off work.

Deadlines. And a few ramblings about technique.

I have a self-imposed deadline of August to finish my new novel. That gives me five months to finish the first draft (25% to go) and whip it into shape. It's a very real deadline. I have something else on from the end of August that will stop me writing for quite some time and I just won't allow myself to not finish it by then.

But it is putting the pressure on. When I think about five months, it seems like a long time, but I know how fast that can travel. But then again, if I look at it practically, it took me only four months from finishing the first draft of The Sound of Butterflies to submitting it and having it accepted by an agent in the UK and a publisher in New Zealand. My writing is much more confident and stream-lined now, so the new draft is a) shorter and b)more polished than TSOB was at this stage.

I talked a long time ago about my decision to try out the shitty first draft technique on this novel, but I abandoned that along the way. You see, I need to feel that I am in control in order to move forward, and that meant going back over the early chapters until the voice was right and until they pointed me in the right direction of where to go next. I also need to feel in love with my book to be excited enough to keep going, and a shitty draft isn't going to generate that love. So even though I'm calling it my 'first draft', my chapter one has gone through six drafts, my chapter two four drafts etc.

I gave a small talk at the Hagley Writers' Institute, where I will be supervising a few students this year. I read from my new novel, which felt really good. Reading it out loud enabled me to hear it with fresh ears and I liked what I heard (you can probably tell I'm going through a bit of a romantic phase with my novel - in all likelihood we will be fighting and/or not speaking to each other in a couple of weeks). It also reminded me how valuable reading your work aloud to yourself is. I did a practice run the day before for timing, and it helped me make a few adjustments to sentences that didn't flow, to trim them a bit and to work on the cadence of the language, which is very important to me: I do not believe in just delivering information in the most economical number of words; they have to sound right. I read the entire manuscript of The Sound of Butterflies aloud to myself for the very final draft. It took me about a week, from memory. A daunting but very valuable exercise, which I recommend to anyone on the verge of finishing their novels. It helps you pick up all sorts of gremlins.

But back to Hagley - one of the students asked the assembled supervisors (an illustrious group: Charlotte Randall, Frankie McMillan, whose reading of a short story had me enthralled, and Jeffrey Paparoa Holman) about how much they plan their work before writing. Charlotte Randall says she doesn't plan hers at all, she just starts writing, although she often writes the last page first so she has something to work towards. Frankie said she writes a draft from start to finish, but she writes short stories, which is a bit different to writing a novel. I gave contradictory answers really. I plan bits. Then I unplan. One novel I nearly wrote I think I planned too much and it froze me. I realised that the students were listening eagerly to see how much planning they should do, but in the end I had to confess that it works differently for everyone and the only way to find out what works for you is to write a novel. I learned more about writing a novel by actually writing one than I could have from any number of classes or how-to books and blogs. That first novel was never published, but it didn't need to be - it served its purpose, which was to teach me how to write a novel.

I spent the weekend in Welllington where I had an absolute ball, catching up with good friends, attending one of the best weddings I've ever been to (and probably ever will) and meeting with my writing group. It was perfect really. My writing group gave me wonderful advice and encouragement and I wished I could explain to them what I was trying to achieve without spoiling all the surprises in the book. At the moment, if it works, it will be the kind of book that you need to read all the way to the end to see how everything that has come before falls into place. If it works.

So this deadline has put a fire under me, and as a result I think my blog is going to suffer a bit. But then I hope I can be back with posts about the process of getting one's second book published, which I hope will be useful to some.

Onwards.

Are you a putter-inner or a taker-outer?

Not the most technical of terms, I know. As my first draft starts to move more swiftly and I work out just what I need to write in order to get there, I've been thinking about the different ways people write their first drafts. Some just write and write and end up with many more thousands of words than they need; their second draft, as well as reshaping and rethinking, is a process of trimming and cutting to find the essence and minimise the waffle. Others, and this is the way I seem to work, use the first draft to sketch scenes quickly and end up going back and filling them out and adding more scenes to expand the novel.

For example, in the second draft of The Sound of Butterflies, I remember going over each scene and slowing it right down. Closing my eyes and imagining myself into the head of whoever had the point of view. What were they thinking about? How were they feeling about what they were thinking about? Where were they physically in the space they inhabited? What could they see from their vantage-point? What did the air feel like on their skin?

Of course I don't necessarily put all these details into the scene when I'm re-writing it, but it helps me find what is important to the story and to the characters' states of mind. It fully immerses me in the character's point of view and enables me to write a more authentic scene. The result is often a more sensual experience for the reader I think, and helps create empathy for the characters.

The first half of my first draft tends to move quite slowly as I explore the characters and their voices (and doing research, but that's another post topic altogether), getting to know them to the point that I can race with more confidence through the second half to get the story down, knowing that I'll be coming back to flesh things out at the end when I know more about where things will end up.

The second draft isn't just about expanding scenes. It's also about a structural overhaul, looking at the pacing, adding a scene here and there to develop a theme or an aspect of the story that seems rushed or contrived or just wrong somehow. At this rate my first draft will probably only be about 60,000 long, but ultimately I know that the book will need to be about 75,000 to tell the full story that I need to tell.

How do you work? I'd be curious to hear from a taker-outer.

No rest for the wicked.

Or, in my case, the slow and lazy. In other words, dear reader, I won't be having much of a Christmas holiday this year as I only have two months left of my contract as writer in residence at Canterbury University (read: two months left of my office and salary). Next year, from March, will involve a lot of juggling - childcare, earning money to feed my family (hubby going back to study), finishing my novel. No pretty office of my own. No salary.

So I think you can undertsand why the next two months are critical to make as much headway as possible. I intend to finish the first draft of my new novel (working title The Collectors) in the next two months, which means around 5000 words a week and much more concentration than I have been able to muster all year. I think it's achievable. The reason I have been slow of late getting words on paper (apart from monstrous distractions) is that I have been immersed in research and planning, so the time has not been wasted. In fact, it was time well spent, because it means I am now in a position to put my head down and churn out the rest of the story. In theory.

This novel has so far been a constant source of surprise, delight, irritation and frustration. The Sound of Butterflies knew what it wanted to be right from the start. The Collectors did not. That is, it thought it did, which is why I bashed out 30,000 words in the first few months of my residency, but then I had to stop and re-think the whole thing. It necessarily got more and more complicated, and ambitious and wild, and just when I thought I was getting a handle on it, last week it decided it wanted to be something else entirely (same characters and basic plot, different raison d’ệtre). I have stopped being surprised by this novel and am going where it takes me.

Previous to writing this novel, I would have said I was the kind of novelist that more or less has a plan when the novel starts, but now I know I am not any one kind of novelist and every book I write will have a different process (just as every child one has is different I suppose, despite the same basic recipe). This first draft has been very much the 'exploratory draft' as described by the wonderful Laini Taylor in Not For Robots.

So I wish everyone a great Christmas break, but I will not be joining you, apart from maybe a couple of days to stuff myself with delicious food and drink. Already I seem to be the only one haunting the English department halls, and I quite like it. Watch this space.

The perfect novel.

I have written the perfect novel. It is complex, multi-layered, gripping and very important. The story is fantastic. It will move readers, and sell extremely well. The critics will laud it, and of course, it will win the Booker. Or the Orange. Or both. How could it not, when it is perfection itself?

The trouble is, so far I have only written it in my head. In your head, things can afford to be perfect. And effortless. The novel assembles itself with precision; all you need to do is get it down on paper, right?

Wrong. In making the transition from head to page, that perfect creature becomes a baggy, twee, trite, lack-lustre, confused monster. I wonder how many great ideas never make it into book form because people can't bear to see their precious darlings being born a bit spotty, or, OK, hideously deformed.

But this, I have to remind myself, is what writing a novel is all about, and those of us who persevere - who don't abandon our ugly babies but work with them to make them achieve all they can in life - are the ones who get the books finished. And OK, they might not be the flawless art that we first imagined, but we have to at least try and mould that first effort into something as close to our dream as we can manage. We can't give up.

On a personal note I thought I could get this novel out in a year, no worries, because it was all there in my head. The days when I hated what I saw appearing on the screen sometimes crippled me for the rest of the week. I have come to realise that I was being a bit optimistic. Sure, I will try and write it in a year, but with a few exceptions, novels can - and probably should - take a lot longer that that.

A few weeks ago, a night class student asked me how many words I like to write a day and I said a thousand (this wasn't a lie - I do like to write a thousand, but I usually fail at this target miserably). He said with a very confused look on his face "But this isn't very many at all!" People have this image of the full-time writer sitting at their desk banging away on their keyboard for 8 hours straight, but those who have actually been there know that this is virtually impossible. Sometimes I sit in my office all day and only write for an hour. But try and explain to people what you're doing for the rest of the time and you realise that to the outside world writing a novel looks an awful lot like laziness.

Other people have also said "If you write a page a day, that's a novel in a year". I think those people have never written a novel either. They must be the kind who think that the perfect novel in their head will pour out of them at a perfect page a day, and at the end of that year all they need to do is print it out and send it off.

The conclusion to this rant is that I am going to go back to trying to write 1000 words a day, and if they look nothing like I was hoping I will shrug my shoulders and tell myself that I have all the time in the world to shape it once the first draft is out. If I hate it, I don't have to live with it. I have the power to change it to the best of my ability. And I don't need to rush it out. If I take the time to research, and ponder, and read things that inspire me, I am not being lazy; I am being kind to my baby.

A couple of my favourite things.

I was going to say "a few of my favourite things" like the song, but realised I only had two for now.

1. Not For Robots. ("Writing is hard. People for whom writing is not hard are robots and should go away. Thank you.") I have spoken before about how sometimes when my novel is going badly I start scouring the internet for answers. The trouble is I don't really know what the questions are. But I think this website might actually hold the answers to them, whatever they are. It's written by American YA author Laini Taylor, which is everything she knows about writing and the process of writing novels. It's great. I have already picked up some very useful suggestions, such as keeping two documents open side by side as I'm writing: one for writing the actual novel, and one for twittering on as I'm thinking about it, or trying stuff out (similar to what Peter Carey refers to as cantillevering), so I'm always getting down what's in my head. She says it helps her enormously and I'm going to give it a go. I could go on about all the great advice, but you should probably go and check it out yourself.

2. The smell of the printer/photocopier room. I had to print out a couple of boring invoices today and when I walked into the room that houses the enormous Deathstar of a printer here in the English department I was hit by a smell that simultaneously excited me and reassured me. Why? I think because usually when I go into that room it's to print off pages of my novel. It makes me feel as though I've been working and I have something to show for it. Of course, today I haven't earned that smug feeling the room has given me (perhaps it needs more ventilation and I am in fact high on ink fumes), but I have it anyway. Come to think of it, I think I'm getting a headache.

A visitation.

I was out of action for a couple of days this week past, having and recovering from minor surgery. I took Friday off work to stay in bed, but did a bad job of it. It's not often I get to be at home alone (child at creche) without feeling I should be doing something, and what do you know, with no guilt in my brain a new idea floated in unannounced.

Now, normally I would be very suspicious of a new idea while I'm at this stage of writing my novel, and frankly, I'd be a little worried too, as it would make me think my novel was going badly to be letting this usurper come a-knocking. But the big surprise was that it was an idea for a film, not a novel. And as I was having a guilt-free day of doing nothing, my mind was open and it just kept coming and coming in that delicious way that my (infrequent) ideas seem to do. It's one of those ideas that is so simple and obvious that it's unbelievable that it hasn't been done before. I even jumped on the internet to do a bit of research and all my ideas were backed up by real, live, juicy facts.

No, I'm not about to turn away from my job as a novelist and become a screenwriter - I have never really had those kinds of ambitions. But I would like to moonlight for a wee while. Indulge myself in tutu-ing away on something that has no deadline or expectation. I think I'll write a treatment and pass it on to friends and family in the film business and see what they make of it. If they think it has possibility, I might take it up as a project once the novel is finished. Or I might not. It depends how loud it gets.

I know how annoying it is to me when people say "oh, I had an idea for a novel, I might just tippy-tap away and see what happens," so I will acknowledge that screen-writing is every bit as hard as writing a novel and I shouldn't be taking it so lightly. I much prefer novel-writing for the control it gives me over my material. Screenwriters I know are bound by producers, film commissions, and that's just at the script stage; then there's the fact that in order for it to be fully realised, someone has to come along with pots of money, whereas if you write a good novel it is relatively inexpensive for a publisher to produce.

So it is not without a bite of humble pie that I am taking on my new little project, and acknowledgment that it's not as simple as it sounds. 

Donna and me.

I can see now why some writers take ten years to write their second books. I’m thinking of people like Donna Tartt and Junot Diaz. Second books are hard. Well, technically speaking it’s not my second book I’m working on; it's my third, although as a follow up to my first published novel, I will call it my second.

It’s not that I’m paralysed by anxiety. If I go looking for the anxiety, I can find it easily enough, and find plenty of things to feed it – will this one be better than the last? Will my publishers like it or reject it? Will I be able to finish it before my residency (and salary) runs out? – but I’m not feeling that anxious, honestly. I’m just looking from the outside in for a moment, cool and detached, at the process I am going through with this one, and it has made me think of Donna Tartt writing The Little Friend. Of course she had extra pressure – how to follow up a mega-hit – that thankfully I’m not burdened with. I’m just really interested in the way this novel keeps slipping out my grasp, like soap in the shower. Just when I think I’ve got it, it twists away again. One moment I think I know exactly what it is, and the next it morphs and changes and I realise that what I have written so far is no more than a bit of dabbling to get me ready for writing the novel properly.

I imagine Donna Tartt starting The Little Friend with an idea: little girl’s brother gets murdered; little girl is kind of quirky, with a quirky Southern family; quirky little girl sets out to find her brother’s killer. I bet she doesn’t even know until she gets to the end that Harriet isn’t going to find the killer. Tartt probably thinks the whole time she is writing, ‘Well I don’t know who did it, but I’m sure if I keep writing it will all become clear.’ Except it doesn’t. So she keeps writing. And as she writes, the book changes – she needs to introduce a strange misfit family into it as suspects and she becomes enamoured of them and wants to give them a point of view. She starts to love writing their dialect. For a while, she follows them to see where they will take her.

She finishes a draft and goes back and changes lots of things. She rewrites passages so they sing, so she can really feel under the skin of the character, view everything through their eyes and write the world accordingly.

In the meantime, some years have gone by. She still doesn’t know who the killer is. She changes some more things, rewrites some more. Another few years goes by. And so on. She knows this whole time that it has to be better than it is, that if she just keeps working away at it, it will get better and better until it is finally worthy of releasing into the world.*

I understand now. I just hope and pray that I can condense that process into a much shorter time.




*Warning: may not actually be how Donna Tartt wrote The Little Friend. In other words, don’t quote me.

Describing the describer.

I didn't see Richard Powers when he came to Wellington (since I wasn't there) but I just received this from the IIML newletter: "On Saturday Victoria’s MA students had a chance to get some one-on-one advice on their novels when he presented a masterclass on narrative perspective, beginning with the notion that ‘a description always describes the describer’. Among the variations Powers offered on this theme was a scene from Damien Wilkins’ novel The Miserables, in which the main character’s view of Wellington from the deck of the interisland ferry reveals much about his state of mind."

Sounds not a million miles from describing the coffin, not the grief. I like his way of putting it, too. I think it's a great writing tip to keep in mind.

Quote of the day (or week or month).

Thanks to the NZ Writers Ezine for this.

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are."
~ Somerset Maugham

How I laughed. Especially as I am going through a particularly difficult week when three magic rules would just do the trick. It reminds me of something I heard back in the dark ages when I sold magazine advertising space. Something about how only 5% of advertising works; if we knew which 5%, we'd all be very rich. The upshot being that you just have to go for it and some of it will stick.

I think I'll just apply that to my writing until the funk has lifted.

Maugham's quote just illustrates how much people want guidance - that if they just knew what the secrets, the 'rules' were, then they could churn out a masterpiece. Bookman Beattie pointed out a quote from Jonathan Coe in the Guardian: "Is there a secret to writing?" Coe: "Yes."

An example, as promised.

In my previous post, Four Little Lights in the Fog, I promised to return with an example from Stefan Merrill Block's book, The Story of Forgetting, of describing the 'coffin, not the grief'. So here it is. The teenaged narrator's mother, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer's, has disappeared from the family home one night, and her son goes looking for her.

"But my voice only echoed across the wide, blank pavement, with only the tungsten streetlamps bearing witness, hanging their heads, apathetically dim. I almost turned back to get my dad and the car, but for fear of losing even a second, I just kept running, beyond the staring, skeletal eye sockets of a thousand darkened windows, past the endlessly churning motorized waterfall at the entrance of our neighbourhood..."

I think we can gather from this that Seth is feeling pretty bleak. Taken out of context, it almost seems over-written, but in the novel it works perfectly. I hope this goes some way to illustrate what I was banging on about.

I highly recommend The Story of Forgetting by the way.

A tribute to my 1B5 or, Monday blues vs Friday pizzazz.

On Monday I forgot my notebook. I was lost without it, and spent the day fluffing around, not getting anything done of any substance. On the previous Friday I had bussed and walked home from work with my head pounding with ideas - in fact, my whole body seemed full of my novel (it is a most curious sensation, anyone else had it?) and when I got home I had to lock myself in the toilet and scribble wildly before I could disengage and greet the family.

But on Monday, on the way home, nothing. Wondering what was for dinner maybe.

My probem on that day wasn't that I didn't know what the story was, or that I didn't know what needed researching (although I had made a list of books to get out of the library in my notebook). It was just that without my notebook, I couldn't transport myself back to that place of total supplication I had been in on Friday.

I have trouble enough with the beginning of the week. The weekend always deflates me, and Fridays are by far my most vigorous day, but without my notebook, I couldn't even begin the process of building up the momentum again. That 1B5 exercise book carries my creative life between its thin, blue- and red-lined sheets. I'm using it right now, scribbling away (believe me, it is a scribble - I don't think anyone else could decipher it) in a cafe over a coffee and a bagel, and I will type this into blogger when I get to the office. It's my companion at lunch and coffee time. I will never be lonely as long as I have my 1B5. It makes me feel smart. It's a good listener. I am lost without it.

About this blog.

The number of visitors to this blog has really jumped since I posted my list, and I knew I had to follow that up with something good. So I posted my four little lights, which also seems to have struck a chord. I can only presume that most of these visitors are writers themselves, doing the same thing I do, which is trawl around the internet looking at other writers' blogs, hoping to glean little insights into the process and take a voyeuristic look at someone else's writing life.

I love reading about others' novel writing process, especially when they get really honest about it and tell you all about that novel - the characters, themes, plot and motifs (Whiti Hereaka is most generous on that front) - but I can't quite bring myself to open myself up quite that much. Still, I hope that I am sharing enough to interest people, and who knows, maybe they'll buy my book if and when it finally comes out and go: "Oh, that's what she was banging on about." I think I win the prize for the most cryptic post about the content of my novel when I wrote about it here. (Incidentally, the serendipity has continued in a most spooky manner.)

I also love it when I hear how my friends' novels are going. It's not just polite interest. When my friend Sarah says she has finished the second draft of her novel, I want to know what kind of work she put into it and what the next phase will be - heavy editing? Minor tweaking? Or when my other friend Bianca says that she has had a major breakthrough and can now write the final chapter of her book, I need to know just what that breakthrough was and how she arrived at it.

So I guess this blog is about sharing the kind of information that I like to know, and I have said it many times before, but in such a solitary activity as writing, it's really exciting to know that others are going through the same thing, and find out how they're doing it. It's the next best thing to working in a busy office. (Ha!)

Four little lights in the fog.

I've had word that a number of creative writing students have been looking at my blog, so I thought I'd share four things that I wish I had known when I was starting out (way back in high school, even) and which have proved to be tips that I come back to again and again.

Conflict is story. This is one I wish I had known when I left school and wanted to write short stories but never knew what should happen in them. If someone had told me to think of a character and give them some conflict, whether from another character (antagonist! Revelation!), a situation or something inside themselves, I would have started writing seriously a lot earlier, and I wouldn't have had so many prettily written pieces of nothing.

Write what you don't know. I had always been told to write what I know. Which is actually sound advice when you're starting out. But when it comes to writing novels, writing what you don't know can elevate your work to another plane altogether. It's easy enough for me to write from the point of view of a thirty-something woman in 2008 with my background and experience (although not well probably), but it's more challenging and ultimately more interesting to write, say, from the point of view of a 27-year-old male lepidopterist in 1904 England. Or a 39-year-old retired army captain in 1904. If the character you want to write about does share some of your own traits and experience, give them a hobby that you know nothing about. The act of researching throws up wonderful ideas for story and conflict, and who knows, you might learn something new, then it will be writing what you know. Keeping yourself interested in what you are writing about will also keep your readers interested.

Describe the coffin not the grief. I don't know where I picked up this tidbit - when I google the expression all I find is myself. So either I've mangled it, or I read it in a book. It might have been John Gardner's Art of Fiction, but I don't have it front of me to check. This is the best writing advice in terms of writing style for me. I should really have it written in huge letters above my desk. When I am revising my work, it plays like a mantra in my head. In case you don't understand what it means, I'll explain how I see it.

It's very easy when describing big emotional moments to get bogged down in melodrama (heaven knows I am as guilty of it as the next person - I'm working on it). I'm always reading people describing how characters feel, the physical sensations they experience, the actions they take (wringing hands, wiping tears, clutching churning stomachs etc), or sometimes people don't bother describing and just say "she felt angry" or "she was sad". Describing the coffin and not the grief is about looking at a scene firmly in the point of view of the character, then filtering what they see through the way they are feeling. I have read a great example of this recently in The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block, which I will post later.

I found a literal example in a book I reviewed a while back, The Center of Winter by Marya Hornbacher, where she describes a funeral: “There is something about a coffin. It is a big, long box … and inside the box is your broken husband, and the lilies are crawling down your throat, closing in as you go, gagging you with their sticky pollen, their fake spring, their cheap, dime-store perfume.” Not once has the narrator descibed her feelings, but you know just what they are, and despite the fact she has lost her husband, there is not a smidgeon of melodrama in sight.

Don't think about a character: What will happen to them next? Think: what will they do next? Because active characters, whose actions drive the narrative, are so much more interesting than those who sit back and only react to situations. It might end up being a flaw that a reader can't put their finger on, but I think it's a flaw nonetheless.

These things have made me a better writer. I'm sure there are other things that I have forgotten, and if I remember them, I will post again. Anybody else like to share their personal favourites? Please don't say "show don't tell" (although I have another post about that one day).

Lists.

I have a list on my whiteboard, left over from the days I decided to stop writing and just let the air in. It is a list of things that remind me of the mood I'm trying to evoke in my novel. Here it is:

sailor tattoos
circus freaks
Nick Cave ballads
Be Good Tanyas
Johnny Cash
Long Black Veil
Gothic novels
cabinets of curiosities
taxidermy
memento mori
remembrance
Renee-Louise Carafice (added August 7)

Out of these things a novel has risen. I recommend the exercise. If anyone else cares to share a similar list, please do.

Swings and Musical Roundabouts.

After moaning in my previous post about how I had lost it, the muse came back to me the following day. As I say in the title, it is very much a case of 'swings and roundabouts', an expression I love. I had two major breakthroughs this week. The first, although seemingly a minor fact about my protagonist, will actually shape the whole novel and made everything fall into place with a resounding 'click'. It has sent me off on another research tangent, but one which I am thoroughly enjoying, and being resident at a university is certainly helping.

The second breakthrough arrived unexpectedly. I didn't even know I was looking for it. I was walking home from the bus last night listening to the soundtrack of The Piano, music by Michael Nyman. It was one of those gorgeously still and very cold Christchurch evenings, with clear indigo skies lined with pink. I relish that walk. It's only ten minutes, but it is my last chance to be fully inside my head and to mull over what I have been working on during the day, before I arrive home to bright lights and cosy air, the chaos of the child's dinner, bath, bed routine. I always have my iPod on and have lately been listening to music that feeds the mood of the novel. I hadn't listened to The Piano for a long time - perhaps years - and it brought back many a melancholy moment I had drawn out by listening to it. Maybe it is a coincidence that, like The Piano, some of my novel is set in colonial New Zealand, but perhaps Nyman's music so perfectly evokes that time, he had sent me there without my realising it.

The breakthrough was the end of the novel. I had been working with a vague idea of a resolution, but hadn't thought about it too much as I trusted that writing my way towards it would make it clearer. So I was surprised when it arrived unannounced in my head apropos of nothing. And it had quite a kick. I was a bit stunned and when I got home had to fend off the family while I wrote it down. It is one of those endings (I hope), that is surprising (it surprised me, for a start), but utterly inevitable. I hope.

Of course, in this crazy writing playground, the swings and roundabouts could just as easily come back sometime in the future and knock my wee ending out of the park.