Now that two people other than my wife have expressed an interest in my novel, I’m feeling a heavy burden of responsibility. Suppose it turns out to be a big disappointment?
Last week I came across an interesting revelation in Brian Kiteley’s 3 AM Epiphany. He said his writing in his letters and journals had always been far better than his attempts at fiction. He thought this was because private writing is more direct and emotionally honest.
I think there’s another reason. When you write in a letter or a journal you are often writing something that you have been turning over in your mind for days, weeks, months or even years. You write from the full range of your experience and draw from a bottomless pool of associations and memories.
When you write fiction you are often groping for these memories and associations. You are struggling to get inside another’s skin and to create things that don’t exist. The resulting prose is more stilted and self-conscious.
There are other reasons, too, no doubt. Trying too hard, for example.
Reading over yesterday’s entry in my blog, I can see that a transition in my writing style occurs quite abruptly following the self-consciously literary repetition of the words “on and off.” I was being perverse and deliberately breaking each rule in turn, so the writing is very artificial and a bit embarrassing.
I think a lot of writers produce this same stilted prose when they try to follow the rules. They chop about what they’ve written until no trace of their true voice remains.
I’ve been looking at the chapter I’ve written this week and it’s not very good. In contrast, some of the notes I’ve written for myself are fascinating.
Maybe I’ll scrap the novel and publish the notes. I think there are literary precedents but I wouldn’t want to embarrass myself further by suggesting comparisons.
Don’t scrap the novel, it probably just needs some re-writing (and re-writing and re-writing).
Thanks for the encouragement Cathryn. But why don’t I have to rewrite my diaries and letters?
This morning I got an interesting response to a letter I wrote yesterday. My correspondent just copied one of my paragraphs and sent it back to me with the message: “this is how I feel but couldn’t find the words to express.”
Maybe this could be the start of my new Chapter 1. 🙂
“Maybe I’ll scrap the novel and publish the notes.”
Is there any real difference between the two other than the designation you’ve given them?
Well that’s a very interesting question, isn’t it, Jennifer? I was thinking about this earlier. There are differences. Maybe I will answer this in more detail another time. Chapter 2 is from Greta’s point of view whereas the notes are from my point of view. My struggle in Chapter 2 is partly to do with handling the point of view of someone who thinks completely differently from me and doesn’t always tell the truth, even to herself. (A fault I never suffer from, obviously!) Chapter 3 is more promising, from yet another point of view (Miguel’s). His point of view is much easier for me to write. Today I’ve had a flash of inspiration concerning a lie he tells to his son. His way of lying is very different from Greta’s, which may help me to understand Greta better. So maybe I’ll leave the problems alone for now and come back to them later.
I know what this is like. Most writers teach the power of great characterization, but it’s not easy. it’s a lot more difficult making something up than excavating your own personality.
One veteran writer from my country told me laughingly, at a time when I was bashing my own fiction, that we are our own worst critics. I didn’t say anything, but in my mind I retorted that writers are always right then.
Right now I’m rewriting a novel i wrote a very long time ago, and what I have in mind for it now is so completely different that it’s going to turn out to be something completely new…at least I hope so. So just don’t throw anything away, whatever you decide to work on.
I’ve been reading quite a lot in Brian Kiteley’s books. (I bought ‘4 am Breakthrough’ at the weekend.) Somewhere in one of them he also says you should never throw anything away. He recommends re-reading old notes, giving them titles, cataloguing them, indexing them. Hmmm. Yes. I am not much of an archivist.
Joseph, didn’t you just tell me that exploring what we don’t know in writing is an absolute must! I am happy to hear you had a breakthrough!
Yes, all my life I have been throwing away the wrong things. Now I need to have another major clearout but I will at least try to keep what’s left of my own writing. I hope I didn’t sound too dogmatic, Jennifer. I have this tendency but I don’t know anything really. That’s why I have to write about what I don’t know.