Metaphors. They’re great, right? Our first port of call when grappling with complexity.
Soz, but seriously...
How can we describe something as multifaceted as our writing processes without resorting to metaphor? My favourite: writing techniques are tools in a toolbox (Stephen King) which we select at need; as we develop as writers, we build up our available toolkit.
Brilliant. However...
This past month I’ve been looking back at my own process/es and found King’s confident, positive toolbox metaphor more of a comfort blanket than a guiding light [soz, again] since the idea we can confidently grasp the right tool at the right moment demands a) total recall and b) an extraordinary level of objectivity about our own creative practice.
For example, the lens that focussed my debut novel more than any other was defining a binary question to create a spine for the story and keep it on track. (No more apologies, okay, I’m just gonna let the mixing rip.) For The Good Road, that question was: ‘Will Angelique save the family farm for her brother, yes/no?’ At the end of every scene, ‘saving the farm’ was more or less likely. The yes/no question = a perfect guiding light, maintaining coherence and linearity throughout 80K words.
[Apologies to whichever writing guru came up with this binary question storytelling technique. Your name is lost in time to me, but the idea is very much appreciated.]
With the seventeenth-century witch trial work-in-progress, however, I wasted months trying to define such a question and years worrying that I couldn’t – did I have an actual story or nothing more than a dreaded situation? The horror! – then, this week, HUZZAH, a get out of gaol card was delivered by George Saunders straight into my inbox.
As it’s free advice from his public ‘Office Hours’ emails, I’ll quote it freely, too. FYI, I think it will be well worth subscribing to his full Substack and plan to do so when cash is less strapped. [How is cash strapped?] Link below.
Anyway, here he is. How to get out of the self-imposed prison of one's own writing process:
‘Sometimes my ideas about my writing don’t work for me either and have to be scrapped or re-understood. And I really mean that. No matter how confidently I talk about some writing-related concept, they’re all just metaphors.
‘Likewise, when someone offers up a writing metaphor, even if it’s a good one, and rings a bell for us – it’s not the thing itself. It’s not the state one is actually in, when revising well... Reality is reality and concepts are concepts: inadequate word-wrappings, generated out of need, always insufficient.’
If the current method isn’t working, move on, he says. Writing techniques must serve the work; if you’re stuck, if the work isn’t working, then maybe you’ve become a slave to your own – or someone else’s – technique.
‘Part of our job as artists is to always be asking: “Is the metaphor (method) I’m currently using still actually helping me?”
‘How do we know?
‘Well, I try to ask myself, now and then (openly, honestly): “Am I making progress? (Is the work, roughly speaking, longer and better than it was three months ago? Or, even: is it, though shorter than it was three months ago, is it better?)”
What fabulous, practical advice. Thank you, Mr Saunders.
As I’m pushed for time [?] again, I’ll stop now, but here’s the link to subscribe to George Saunders’ Story Club. It’s £40 pa or £5 a month for full access, with a free option for his regular public posts.
https://georgesaunders.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=email-subscribe&r=j482m&next=https%3A%2F%2Fgeorgesaunders.substack.com%2Fp%2Foffice-hours-a9c&utm_medium=email
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2 comments:
Interesting post. I have never found one single solid way of working. I make it up as I go along. I write one messy first draft. I stop and revise during the first draft. Last month, tired out from a heavy cold, I simply sat at my desk and scribbled all kinds of notes down as and when they occurred to me, looking for the places in my current WIP where the plot wasn't working. Whihc helped enormously.
I don't expect this will ever change.
Hi, Nick. I hear you! Making it up as we go along sounds about right. I have a feeling I study writing processes as a way to procrastinate. Certainly, all my plotting and planning leaves me floundering far, far too often. The only thing I feel works, up to a point, are structured synopses. When I get totally lost, they are there to remind me that once upon a time I thought I had a story to tell and maybe will get around to finishing it one day. Good luck to you!
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