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The Writer's Progress
Oct. 31st, 2004 09:42 am
Photo: downtown Toronto, yesterday~~~~~~~~~~
Running on a prayer and a hope, that's the way life used to go. I need to start delving down into those old whispers of desire and idealism. Tomorrow begins the long journey from a dock in a dark cavern of the past.
Writing like mad. That's what NaNoWriMo felt like last year, spewing words. That's the trick to getting past all the things that block us, just giving yourself a time and place to write, not allowing yourself to fill the spaces with uncomfortable silences. Someone said writing is like opening a vein and forcing it to bleed.
These past few days have been busy, and I never had the time to sit down with a notebook and plan the novel the way I wanted, chapter by chapter. Maybe I'll still manage it this evening. Maybe I'll still do it tomorrow, before I plough into the words. I feel the necessity for a game plan.
Right now, right here, I'm in the middle of a writing exercise I have practiced and refined over a course of weeks: to sit down, giving myself fifteen minutes, and write whatever is on my mind. Usually I have some preconceived ideas about what I want my posts to be.
But there have been bad days, depressed days, when I hardly had anything to say. Sometimes the bad days were the best days, because I had to push past the skin of preparedness into the deep flesh of the soul. I had to poke and tug at things I would rather not say. Sometimes they turn out being the best things to say. They are the truth.
Last year, when I wrote Tendril, I didn't know how to sit at a keyboard and keep my fingers going. I had the writing practice down pat when it came to working with a notebook and fountain pen. But my work on Tendril sometimes ground to a snail crawl, because I was working on a keyboard. This fall has changed that. Typically, in 15 minutes I write more than 600 words. If I keep up this kind of a pace while working on my novel, I should be able to write my daily quota in an hour.
I can't remember the daily quota: I think it's about 1,800 words. But I'm hoping to write closer to 2,400 so I can take days off. That was one of the things that left me gasping last year: I had to write every single day. I think it will be better to work a little harder most days so I can have some breathing room.
The more I think about the story waiting to be written, I begin to suspect it will take more than 50,000 words. But my task now, the way I see it, is not necessarily to complete the draft, but to write 50,000 words, to get it down one way or another, by fairness or felony, whatever the personal cost. That's the madness of the writer: you keep writing no matter what. It's the only way to sanity. Maybe your relationships fall by the wayside. People have to take what they get, and in this case they get a writer, so they might as well accept the reality of it. I can't apologize too much for being this way, it would only mean stumbling on the wayside. Even now I can feel myself faltering as I think about the way it affects the rest of my life.
I picture myself like Pilgrim in The Pilgrim's Progress; when his family stood calling to him, he just kept running, reminding himself of his higher purpose. It's strange to see Pilgrim tearing towards me now with his fingers in his ears, as I start delving into my own religious history. Writing a novel is like his long journey.
The reality of this writing life is not so extreme. I don't have to be heartless. I don't have to give up my life. And writing is not salvation, it's only my sanity. But the truth is: the creative life must be lived radically, otherwise it will be superficial, with nothing meaningful to say.
