The novel that is going nowhere.
Learning to write a novel
The novel will not write itself. It would be nice if it could and would. But it can’t and won’t. That is the sordid truth. My counsellor instructs me that speaking or writing the facts of my chosen life will somehow aid in the reconciliation of said realities. But at the end of this paragraph, I feel exactly the same as I did when I began it.
Instead, I notice even more keenly that a first time author suffers a unique and often insurmountable challenge: That of not knowing how to write a novel. Philip Roth mentioned that he never knows how to write any of his novels when he begins, and that discovery is part of his process. 1 But the problem of a Roth is distinctly different from that of a Joe. The experienced author enjoys the comfortable awareness that he has done it before and can, given an adequate outpouring of sweat, do it again. The first time author has only the fear that it cannot be done.
Any number of books provide detailed descriptions of the component parts of a novel and how they should fit together. There are books that attempt to teach character construction and development, plotting, pacing, editing, revision, idea generation, genre writing, and so on. After reading a heap of them, I still find no relief or confidence. I might as well have been reading instructional manuals on surgery before attempting to transplant a loved one’s kidney. I think that these books are more useful to the experienced author who is fine-tuning his craft, than to the novice who is still fumbling about in the wilderness that is the vicinity of publication.
The unfinished novel
“I can guarantee you that in the drawer of everyone here, you will find the first ten pages of an unfinished novel.” 2
The challenge is not writer’s block. In fact, I’m convinced that writer’s block is a myth. It exists only in anecdotes and as a tool used during polite conversation in order to avoid having to explain why that novel, that story, or that article is still not yet completed. The real challenge is having too many ideas and having poor containers in which to put them.
The ideas are plentiful but they do not cohere. When forced onto the page, they become a molotov cocktail that explodes upon reading. Choosing the ideas that fit together in a way that is both natural and compelling takes motion away from the pen, stagnates the sentence and beckons depression.
The ideas a young author has are violent gremlins that do not play well together. It is only recently that I noticed how ten pages is often the pain threshold beyond which I can’t bear the cacophony of endless disharmony. I tell myself that perhaps this is not the story I wanted to write, that my ideas are actually for another story which I begin promptly only to discover, ten pages later, yet another story I should be writing. It is an endless cycle of desperation, aspiration and frustration. It is a perpetual quest for the dead end at the expense of the ending.
Taking a story from nowhere to somewhere
Rigorous planning, plotting and character sketching are mandatory at this point. I’d wager that they are always necessary. There is no such thing as the novel which “simply pours out of you”3, not unless you are a Doctorow or a Lessing4.
Not only are they absolutely necessary but they are also continuously necessary. I have learnt that the plan must get revised as I write: new details must be included, intricacies ironed out, new connections made, scenes rearranged and characters re-imagined. In this sense, the plan becomes a measure of progress, a reminder that I am moving forward with my writing and not stagnating in a fecund wasteland of mutating, misshapen ideas.
When my novel is complete I imagine that my plan will look a bit like the walls of a cell in which a succession of thousands of solitary prisoners have been left for dead but with an infinite supply of chalk. The scratchings of a madman will look more civilised in comparison.
It is by looking through my plan and considering it the primary artifact of my writing efforts that I slowly begin to realise the huge burden that being an author entails: Any world, no matter how limited in scope or constrained in scale, is a microcosm chock full of infinite nuances and linkages. It has to be imagined as a whole mechanism, internally consistent and externally complete.
A human being is the product of her environment and that environment is the world. In order to construct a character, it is impossible to avoid building the entire world at large, even though that edifice might never explicitly appear in the story. It is that difficulty that wears one out and breaks the spirit. And yet, it is inescapable.
It is instructive to select a text from a favourite author and then to imagine the plan that must have spawned and been spawned by that novel. The plan seems to stretch in all directions, folding over itself and piling high in endless contoured complexity. At a certain point it feels as though the plan is too vast to fit within the brain but –and this is the important point– it must.
Learning to write a story is a journey through the very fabric of creation and creativity. It is a bid to reach for that essential seed, to grasp and reveal the kernel of the potent force from which the universe is built. It is an attempt to harness that almost unfathomable vastness, to comprehend it and contain it, like a genie within a lamp, inside the tapestry of our story.
It is madness to dream that it can be done. Every element must be formed by hand and placed in its right place. Every character must live in this world even as they live in the world we create. A bird’s eye view is not sufficient and must be combined with a worm’s eye view so that we can see from above and below, from inside and outside, at once.
The first-time author has to discover the entire toolkit, method and perspective used by God.
Footnotes:
1Philip Roth Discusses His Latest Accolade (NPR, 27/09/2005)
2 Cooper, Bertram. Mad Men Season 2.
3 Doctorow, Cory. Little Brother. Introduction.
4 Lessing, Doris. The Golden Notebook. Introduction.
