Stav Sherez, author of the great A DARK REDEMPTION and the forthcoming ELEVEN DAYS (which I have yet to read) posted a really interesting piece on his blog last week (stavsherez.com ) about writing first drafts. Of novels. He describes very eloquently the anxiety of initiation. This is something that most writers will understand all too well – that sea of possibilities that is either seductive or paralyzing. He quotes T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets (. . . so each venture is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate . . .) And then he lists a few tips for starting a new novel.
I love lists like this, as I think I made clear in my first post here. But I’d like to present an alternative view to one of the items in Stav’s list. And let me just say, this isn’t an argument, it’s not even a debate, there’ll be no pistols at dawn in either Chiswick or Terenure – because there is no right or wrong in these matters. It’s just that my experience is clearly very different from Stav’s, and it’s a subject I find pretty interesting.
When starting a novel, Stav says, “Don’t Look Back! – Don’t ever look back at what you’ve written until you’ve finished the first draft.” This makes a lot of sense, I can see the attraction of it, and for all the reasons Stav outlines. But my problem – and I’ve just embarked on a new novel – is that I . . . I . . . I LOOK BACK. There, I’ve said it. And if you were to ask me quietly, like Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense, “How often?”, I’d have to look you in the eye and whisper, “ALL THE TIME”.
I can’t help it. Can’t NOT do it. I’ve tried, but not recently. And that’s because I’ve been writing for long enough to know that this is how I operate and that there’s nothing I can do to change it. But in a weird way, at this stage, despite the glacial pace at which I write, and all the frustration that that entails, I wouldn’t want to change it. Because it makes sense to me. I find that I’m unable to move forward until I’m sure of what’s behind me, that I’m unable to bring the next thing into focus until the last thing has been properly brought into focus. At its simplest, it’s that I can’t know where I’m going if I don’t know where I’ve been. So I constantly re-read, and re-write, as I go . . . inching forward. This might seem to preclude spontaneity, but it actually doesn’t, because I’m constantly being surprised – maybe in smaller, more frequent bursts, but it’s there, and it’s essential to the process.
One result of this is that I don’t really think in terms of drafts at all. When I reach the end, I’m pretty much done. There will be changes, and additions, and lots of corrections, and fixing, and editing, but it’s all small stuff. I’ve never had to make major adjustments at this point – no structural or plot changes, no substantial cuts. Along the way, of course, there’s plenty of paralysis, and despair (writerly despair, not the real kind), and too much of what feels like soul-sapping idleness. And it takes a long time. It’s not a perfect system by any means, and I certainly wouldn’t have designed it this way, but somehow I always seem to get there in the end.
Not that it feels like that now, of course. The new book is called UNDER THE NIGHT.
Hey, at least I have a title.