For years
I’ve thought that there was a formula for writing. I don’t mean the ingredients
of a story – characters, action, setting – but a formula for how to write.
Something along the lines of Be at the
desk by such and such a time and don’t get up until you’ve produced this many
words and keep going like this until the book’s done and all you have to do is polish it up for the
publisher.
This may
well work for Stephen King, or Neal Stephenson, or Ken Follet. William Manchester
was said to be able to pound out thousands of words in punishing 18 to 24 hour
marathons. Woody Allen and Edward Albee have both spoken about working the
whole story out in advance and then getting it down on paper. Fast.
None of
this works for me. Most weeks I write from Monday to Friday, in the mornings. I
try to write 6 pages, or about 1500 words. But there are days when what I write
is just rubbish. And I know it’s rubbish as I’m writing it. That’s not only
really depressing, but it can stop me writing for days as a big fat cloud of What’s the point? descends.
But just
a few weeks ago, I discovered this quote by Aldous Huxley in one of my
favourite books. (The Writer’s Chapbook.)
I know very dimly when I start what’s going to
happen. I just have a very general idea, and then the thing develops as I write.
Sometimes – and it’s happened to me more than once – I will write a great deal,
then find it just doesn’t work, and have to throw the whole thing away… Things
come to me in driblets, and when the driblets come I have to work hard to make
them into something coherent.
Reading
that felt like somebody had pulled a curtain aside and let in the light. Those
words described so perfectly how I write that it could have been me saying them.
And since I’ve read them, it hasn’t made my writing any easier, but it most
definitely has made it easier to keep
writing, getting the words down, working on them, making them better. Always
making them better. Making them ‘into something coherent’.
Not to mention remembering what the
late, great Harlan Ellison once said: ‘Of course it’s hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it.’
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www.nickgarlick.com www.nickgarlickisreading.com
8 comments:
Here's the formula for writing: Get words down, however you can, with whatever tools it takes, however long it takes, with whatever amount of rewriting it takes, until you finish it. Then rewrite it again, several times.
Yes, I'm a driblets person too! Love the surname Plimpton from that book cover.
Welcome to ABBA, Nick!
Can't find a way to reply to each comment - is that possible?. - so I'll use this to say Thank You.
Great post, Nick! You've made me feel much better about my current way of writing. If you stay sitting at your desk for 12 hour stretches, you just end up with muscular skeletal problems and piles. Probably. 🙂
Lu,
All I've ever gained from more than five hours at the desk is exhaustion and gloom. It just doesn't work for me. And the story suffers more.
I'm a driblets person, too. Cue much sneering by proper planners :-)
I’m a driblet pantser too. Apart from the fact that until recently I had a full time day job and had to get up early enough to get to work without having to get up even earlier to write before leaving.
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