the novel as marriage
May. 2nd, 2005 02:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyPage-proofs on their way to New York.
::deep sigh of relief::
So I'm sitting here, brain fried to the bone, not even thinking about the list of projects as long as my arm that I've got stacked up waiting for a runway ... and the backbrain pops up with a new idea.
Typical.
There's a stage of a novel (less so for me for short stories because they tend to dump themselves in my lap more or less of a piece) where it's a toy. The early world-building, character-development, I wonder what kinds of stories I can tell in this world with these characters stage, when you can do anything and go anywhere and make up as much crazy shit as you like. It's actually the best toy in the world, a novel in that stage.
I've called this the honeymoon stage, but that's actually not quite right. It's more like the object of crush seems to really LIKE me stage, where you're giddy and obsessed, but it's all okay because nobody's said anything yet and there's no commitment and the less attractive parts of your beloved's personality (and we all have them, whether we are crush object or crushed-out geek, novel or novelist) have not yet made themselves manifest.
The honeymoon stage properly comes later, once you've admitted to yourself you're writing a novel, but before you hit the first wall.
Many marriages between novelist and novel end in messy, acrimonious divorce before the production of an offspring--i.e., an actual novel, rather than a work-in-progress. And since novelists (except for the occasional freak like Harper Lee) are polyamorous polygamists, we often have many marriages in various stages of courtship, wedded bliss, marital counseling, and legal separation, all at once.
Well, I do. Perhaps other writers at least practice serial monogamy.
I'm not sure divorce between novelist and novel is ever final; if it is, the novel dies. But mostly, I've found, the novel goes underground like a Bond villain or The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s Dr. Egret, gets a new face, colored contacts, dyes its hair ... comes back, bats its eyelashes, and I fall in love again. Even though I know it will only end in heartbreak.
But it seems that the novel is willing to keep trying until I get it right. This new idea is perfectly recognizable as the reincarnation of a story I wrote in high school and got wrong, and have gotten wrong a couple of times since. It's not the same story, but I can see the lineaments of its previous iterations in its face.
They're very patient, novels.
But what I was saying is that a novelist's relationship with a story changes over the process of decanting that story from brain to paper. The more of a story you write, the fewer choices you have about where that story can go and the more writing becomes problem-solving. There's only so long you can go on posing questions before you have to start answering them, and answering questions is work. Convincing the story to lie down on the bed you have made for it is work. And staying married to a novel when you reach that stage is also work. It's so much easier to let yourself be seduced by the new idea that's walked in the door in its skin-tight leather pants and is giving you a smoldering come-hither look that promises it's going to rock your world.
And it's probably not lying. But sooner or later, you'll hit the same stage with it that you've hit with the previous idea, where it glowers at you and walks out in the middle of arguments and won't return your calls.
And you find yourself looking around, waiting for another idea to come seduce you.
This is why finishing a novel is such an accomplishment. Because it's so much easier not to. It's so much easier to say, It's the novel's fault. It's not trying. To say, I can't do anything about it. To say, This relationship is over, and walk out the door yourself.
You have to be patient and stubborn, to write a novel. You have to have faith that the novel still loves you. You have to continue to love the novel.
Your new flings can wait their turn.
And they will.
Novels are patient.
::deep sigh of relief::
So I'm sitting here, brain fried to the bone, not even thinking about the list of projects as long as my arm that I've got stacked up waiting for a runway ... and the backbrain pops up with a new idea.
Typical.
There's a stage of a novel (less so for me for short stories because they tend to dump themselves in my lap more or less of a piece) where it's a toy. The early world-building, character-development, I wonder what kinds of stories I can tell in this world with these characters stage, when you can do anything and go anywhere and make up as much crazy shit as you like. It's actually the best toy in the world, a novel in that stage.
I've called this the honeymoon stage, but that's actually not quite right. It's more like the object of crush seems to really LIKE me stage, where you're giddy and obsessed, but it's all okay because nobody's said anything yet and there's no commitment and the less attractive parts of your beloved's personality (and we all have them, whether we are crush object or crushed-out geek, novel or novelist) have not yet made themselves manifest.
The honeymoon stage properly comes later, once you've admitted to yourself you're writing a novel, but before you hit the first wall.
Many marriages between novelist and novel end in messy, acrimonious divorce before the production of an offspring--i.e., an actual novel, rather than a work-in-progress. And since novelists (except for the occasional freak like Harper Lee) are polyamorous polygamists, we often have many marriages in various stages of courtship, wedded bliss, marital counseling, and legal separation, all at once.
Well, I do. Perhaps other writers at least practice serial monogamy.
I'm not sure divorce between novelist and novel is ever final; if it is, the novel dies. But mostly, I've found, the novel goes underground like a Bond villain or The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s Dr. Egret, gets a new face, colored contacts, dyes its hair ... comes back, bats its eyelashes, and I fall in love again. Even though I know it will only end in heartbreak.
But it seems that the novel is willing to keep trying until I get it right. This new idea is perfectly recognizable as the reincarnation of a story I wrote in high school and got wrong, and have gotten wrong a couple of times since. It's not the same story, but I can see the lineaments of its previous iterations in its face.
They're very patient, novels.
But what I was saying is that a novelist's relationship with a story changes over the process of decanting that story from brain to paper. The more of a story you write, the fewer choices you have about where that story can go and the more writing becomes problem-solving. There's only so long you can go on posing questions before you have to start answering them, and answering questions is work. Convincing the story to lie down on the bed you have made for it is work. And staying married to a novel when you reach that stage is also work. It's so much easier to let yourself be seduced by the new idea that's walked in the door in its skin-tight leather pants and is giving you a smoldering come-hither look that promises it's going to rock your world.
And it's probably not lying. But sooner or later, you'll hit the same stage with it that you've hit with the previous idea, where it glowers at you and walks out in the middle of arguments and won't return your calls.
And you find yourself looking around, waiting for another idea to come seduce you.
This is why finishing a novel is such an accomplishment. Because it's so much easier not to. It's so much easier to say, It's the novel's fault. It's not trying. To say, I can't do anything about it. To say, This relationship is over, and walk out the door yourself.
You have to be patient and stubborn, to write a novel. You have to have faith that the novel still loves you. You have to continue to love the novel.
Your new flings can wait their turn.
And they will.
Novels are patient.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 08:50 pm (UTC)I appear to be a serial monogamist when it comes to non-fiction. I will now be incredibly amused by this. I haven't been able to start any kind of serious work on the new project I want to start, because I was waiting for the one-in-progress to go out in the mail.
(It is now on its way to a nice acquisitions editor who I hope will take good care of her. I think it's a her, anyway. It's hard to tell with non-fiction.)
no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-03 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-03 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-04 02:33 pm (UTC)What's been scaring me lately is that after completing draft 2 of my current novel (a plot re-write), and working a bit on the 3rd draft, I'm now feeling the siren song of other novels it could be.
"Look," Thierry calls, "isn't my story more exciting? And it's based on your original premise, only better."
And during/after reading Mrs. Dalloway I start wondering if the riffs between past, present, fiction (novel-within-the-novel), and non-fiction (actual guidebook referred to in the novel) are the more interesting story and my whole story re-folded, like some origami creation.
But then I start thinking that I made a commitment to this novel, not the other visions and that I should just plough ahead and keep polishing.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 07:07 am (UTC)Got a link to this from
And sorry for triple-posting.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 03:40 pm (UTC)nice stuff
Date: 2009-02-05 08:29 am (UTC)Thanks for sharing nice information.