Writing as an off-lead Portuguese Water Dog
First things first: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/04/12/Meet-Bo-the-First-Dog/ *
A friend in the throes of writing her first novel** emailed me yesterday: Suzi has been coaching me on writing and POV***. Now I am looking at my ms and thinking, [mild expletive deleted]. Is that scene in omni or limited?????? . . . so I reread Spindle’s End to help me think. I feel as confused as if you had asked me to climb up that bell tower and ring Stedman . . . although at present if you just asked me to tug on the rope I would be confused.
I thought about this for a while. There were other things in her email to respond to . . . and as many of you know, I’m extremely good at not responding at all. Aside from the eternal time question, I don’t like interfering with other people’s process; as a professional writer I possess an authority I don’t necessarily deserve, and everyone is different.
But I wrote back:
Um. Too much thinking is bad for storytelling. POV is something a bunch of English teachers invented. Listen to the story. Let it tell you how to write it. Stop getting in the way.
And she was so grateful I was a little nonplussed and started thinking about what to write back again. And then I thought†: wait a minute! Put this in a blog entry!
So this is, more or less, what I want to say to my friend and anyone else who is interested: People don’t fully realize that writing is a practical skill, like making cinnamon rolls as big as your head, or teaching your hellhound to lift both front feet serially to have his harness put on.†† People get distracted by the fact that writing is words on a page, when in execution it’s as visceral and three-dimensional as being chased by Baskervillean hounds–or it should be. If you don’t have that heart in mouth, that chasm is very deep and I wish this bridge had a railing, feeling, you may be in trouble: the story should be too big for you, you should be looking at it and going Eeeep.
Too many shoulds. I said I didn’t like interfering with other people’s process, that everyone is different.††† But there needs to be a physical strength in what you’re writing. I describe it this way in the afterword to ROSE DAUGHTER: ‘If you were picking up stones in the dark, you would know when you picked up a puppy instead. It’s warm; it wriggles; it’s alive.’ It should feel out of your control. There I go with the ‘shoulds’ again. But a story that does exactly what you tell it, that you make up one word after another and put down on the page like writing a shopping list–that you can name, identify and call to heel each component of–will be about as interesting as a shopping list. Interesting to you, maybe.
I should perhaps specify that I’m talking about writing fiction . . . and just possibly that I’m prone to exaggeration. But I’ve given presentations and Q&As and run seminars too many times with groups of earnest would-be writers who have pretty well talked themselves out of their own stories. Never mind what it means! Never mind what you’re trying to do! (You’re trying to write a story!) Never mind the blasted story arc! Never mind that you don’t know why a three-headed goat showed up in the second chapter! Write him where he wants to go and worry about him later! Never mind that retelling a fairy tale is a really dumb thing to do because everyone knows how it ends and nobody will publish it! ‡ Is it alive, does it want to be written, does it want you to write it? Do you want to write it? Then stop wasting time and get on with it. Have your nervous breakdown and your crisis of confidence in your own time: when you’re writing the story, the only thing that matters is the story.‡‡ Listen to your story. It knows everything you need to know about it. And nobody else knows diddlysquat.
And this is where I need to say again that people are different. I know professional writers–wait, make that good professional writers–who write outlines first, and write to their outlines; and good professional writers who start sending stuff out for critiques in first draft.‡‡‡ But it’s way too easy to get distracted or confused–outlines and other people’s critiques can become just another way of endlessly sharpening pencils. If an outline makes the energy of the story leap and dance, then write your outline. If a reader’s comments make your heart beat faster and you feel a little breathless as you suddenly see what your story could be, then send your first draft out. § But be careful that that’s what’s going on, and it’s not that you’re just trying to weasel out of the hard work.
Because that’s what it comes back to: writing is very, very, very hard work. One of the reasons I always encourage people who want to write to jump in and the hell with it, is writing needs more practice than you can ever give it: even if you make a mess of it, because you should have written an outline first, or you should have stopped and thought about what the three-headed goat was for–and note I don’t say concluded or planned or made up what the three-headed goat was for: beware of conscious decisions: the story should tell you what happens, not you tell the story how it’s going to go. When you bring a puppy home, do you tell it how it’s going to grow up?§§–even if you make a mess of it, you’ll have learnt a lot. And then you take all that valuable new skill, and write another story.
* * *
* Thank you, viventlesfees
** Good luck, kiddo, you’ll need it
*** Point of view, for those of you lucky enough to have escaped studying literature
† Out galloping over the landscape with hellhounds. It’s been a gorgeous gorgeous day which unfortunately gives the hoi polloi ideas on a Bank Holiday Monday. It was inevitable that everywhere we went we met happy smiling trippers . . . I already find this annoying, but then, as we know, I annoy easily . . . these people who look round the countryside like it’s a museum, like it’s a re-enactment of ancient folkloric practises of their forebears. Hey. Some of us live here. Some of us walk here every day, like it’s a normal thing to do. This is also where your Styrofoam and shrink-wrapped packages of chicken breasts and strawberries originate. See that pig? She only exists because you want bacon for breakfast. And that sprouting field you’re encouraging your children and dogs to trample is lettuce I was planning on enjoying in my salad in June. It’s the disconnect that bugs me: these are also the people that toss their empty crisp packets in the hedgerows and pick the flowers planted on the greens of quaint little towns like this one.
The disconnect and the dogs. It was a particularly bad day for troops of dogs, and not a one on lead, of course.^ We were run at by a German Shorthaired Pointer and I saw my life flashing before my eyes again, but all he did was circle round behind us and follow, grumbling, for a while–while his humans continued on strolling and laughing. Yesterday was the day we were almost eaten by the Hound of the Baskervilles: we’d just come through a gate, and on the far side of the field I saw something run past that moved like a dog but was the size of a small horse. I decided I was imagining things, took a firm grip on hellhounds, and kept going, and about halfway across the field it reappeared out of a copse: it was a dog and it was the size of a small horse. I told myself that wolfhounds were rarely vicious–true: they don’t need to be: they can pick you off mildly and serenely–and kept on. It too circled round behind us and followed for a while and I could feel its hot breath on the back of my neck, while hellhounds, ECIAC,^^ turned themselves inside out in a frenzy of frustrated longing. It really did not offer any hostile moves, barring its mere existence and awful proximity . . . I finally spotted its people, on the opposite side of the field with their five other dogs, and if they even noticed that their elephant was frightening the bejeezus out of someone, they gave no sign. It eventually went back to them, and we made it to the other side of the field where I had to stop a minute and decide whether the adrenaline was going to make me throw up or not. No. But it was kind of a near thing.
Anyway. Today was not a good day for coherent, work-related thought while hurtling hellhounds.
^ No. One. A medium-sized rabid terrier with a little old lady who was barely hanging on to him. I don’t want to be around when he knocks her down.
^^ Especially Chaos, It’s Always Chaos
†† Aaaugh.
††† I don’t think Peter has ever said ‘Eeep’ in his life. But he’d agree with me about the necessary energy of a story.
‡ My position, in a story I’ve told many times, when I was writing BEAUTY. Nobody was retelling fairy tales in 1977. Sometimes you just have to go with what’s winding its lead around your knees and barking, and never mind what the world says.
‡‡ Something I know way too much about. My career has been one long crisis of confidence, which is why I write so slowly; I need a lot of time for the nervous breakdowns.
‡‡‡ Shudder.
§ And treasure a reader who can do that for you. They are a lot rarer than rubies.
§§ In your dreams. . . .
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