The Grasshopper on Writing, Sunday Edition: Gestation
I wrote a short story in my head this morning and that’s where it’s staying
I’ve started thinking about my next novel project. It’s been two years since I finished my second long fiction manuscript. Both existing stories are not published. There are two main reasons for this. One, I am lazy regarding finding an agent and two, I viewed both of them as practice; challenges to see how I might do with the form.
One is a Murakami-style adult adventure where the main character encounters an unfathomable situation that changes his life. It employs just enough magic realism to be credible, although totally improbable. I set a few ground rules once I began to see where it might be going. One was to be very limited in the use of magic and another was to make it seem as real as possible while telling a fantastic story.
Suspension of disbelief, you might say. I’m reasonably happy with the result.
The second one was completely different, an exploration of the path a woman takes to reassemble her life after the suicide of her husband. No magic in that one except the magic life itself offers. Unlike the first story, I had an idea where this one was going though I let the story find its own way.
One of the goals of this one was minimalism. The barest amount of description, dialogue, and internal examination of my character’s motivation. My inspiration was film, specifically the way these things are not found in scripts because they are provided by the visuals and in the actions of the characters.
That one had a long gestation period where I had the premise, based very loosely on the experience of a friend, but I let the idea percolate while trying not to think about it until ready to start writing.
“What is freedom? It’s awareness that’s not trapped in attraction or aversion.”
Ram Dass, “Little 'Aha!'s”
All stories start as seeds
Both stories started with just the glimmer of a notion, a big contrast to my day to day article writing, which arranges unfolding events, mostly political, so that I can interpret them for myself and my readers. Those non-fiction pieces arrive as whole cloth, the entire project taking place in a morning, from basic research to finished draft to published story.
It’s not unusual to find myself writing and publishing two pieces in a day if the news cycle is particularly dynamic, which it is these days- to put it mildly. But even this rapidfire writing and publishing has a gestation period. I start to see a story developing in the news and people’s reactions to it until it gels into something that can stand on its own.
Anyone who has been reading this newsletter knows I am a big believer in letting that unconscious part of us do its work behind the scenes, rather than literally building a story on a scaffold of outlines and character sketches and plots.
I get the seed of a story idea or a next scene in a novel, write something, and then let the next scene write itself based on its predecessor. It’s an organic unfolding rather than a structure like a building. More like a tree growing, if you need a metaphor.
If you follow that organic development notion, imagine the constant dividing of cells as branches and leaves imperceptibly grow, rearranging nutrients and sunlight into cellulose. This is why, once you start actually writing, you need to write every day. Those cells need to grow and split. If you halt the process they will die.
Getting too abstract for you? That’s the way my mind is working today I guess. Doing a little riffing as I try to describe an internal process that defies logical explanation. I hope it is comprehensible. If not, comments are open!
Time
Writing novels takes time. Yes, there are writers who can bang one out in a month but they are rarely any good. There are exceptions to this and the one standout example I know of is Lawrence Durrell’s classic set of novels known as The Alexandrian Quartet.
Durrell wrote a novel, Justine, set in pre WWII Alexandria, Egypt. A romance, an intrigue, beautiful mysterious women and men, an exotic setting. When it was released in the late fifties it was a huge bestseller. It was chosen as a Book of the Month, a format that no longer exists but was a way to sell a ton of books. And it did.
The plot suggested a sequel and his publisher clamored for it, but Durrell had not written it. Strike while the fire is hot he was told and, needing money, Durrell did just just that, writing the next three titles in less than a year. The Quartet includes Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea, all remarkable extensions of the story with multiple character plot lines and an evolving perspective wrapped in gorgeous writing.
Not only were the books bestsellers, they were a literary success with some reviewers calling them the greatest English novel of the second half of the twentieth century. In my opinion they are and I have reread all four many times. The writing is luminescent, the characters fascinating, and there is even a political plot set in that prewar city.
The four books are considered a single novel in four parts, a total of over a thousand pages, written in a year. And published fast, which is rarely the case. The only unfortunate aspect of this monumental success was Durrell’s inability to repeat it. He wrote more novels but in my opinion, they fell far short of his masterpiece. A common story with writers, and other humans.
My first novel took about a year, not counting several rewrites. My second one, about eighteen months but that includes any rewrites and some additions, as it was initially novella length and those can be difficult to sell. Adding to a book project that appeared to be finished was a challenge but I think it makes a stronger story.
That’s one part of the time equation. If you go the traditional publishing route and are fortunate enough to get a book deal, you are likely still looking at a year or two before you hold a book in your hands. This tends to be the case more with novels than non-fiction. When I was writing how-to books in the nineties, it was typically about a year from proposal to actual book in stores.
But that is an entirely different process. Either way, these projects take time, which can be daunting for new writers. While the Durrell story is an exception, the stories of writers taking years to complete a project are almost the rule rather than the exception.
That’s just the nature of the beast.
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