So, I'm writing a book.
I say that, having the dead ghosts of the start of about half a dozen books languishing on various external hard-drives in various parts of the world.
This one though....is completely planned and discussed and my main character even has a face. Thus, as my creation, I am rather attached to her. Quite possibly I might not let her die halfway through her story.
Mostly, I am doing it as a discipline. As in: I WILL stick this out for a full 90,000 words, or else I will NEVER EAT CHOCOLATE AGAIN. DAMNIT.
That, my friends, is a threat worth attending to.
Also, I have abatshit crazy brain, so I tend to always have something on hand to distract it with. Sometime it's a fictional house I am redecorating in my head. Sometimes it's travel plans to exotic places. Currently, it's perfecting this story line and deciding the exact shade of my character's hair.
Besides the need for distraction, I just have way too much to say about everything, including the things I know absolutely nothing about, as well the things that are interesting to absolutely no one but myself. I need an outlet. Seriously.
Just ask the man who has to wake up everyday to an email of approximately five pages, possibly even ten, about not much more than the thoughts that have crossed my brain in the two hours since I last spoke to him.
"Do I really have to read this?"
"How is that even a question?"
End of story.
Then there is the fact that I just really want a movie deal. Because that's where the money is, yo. Write a book, get Bradley Cooper to star in the movie version.
I mean, he would be my first choice. Why? I have no idea. (But seriously: RIGHT?!)
I would also be happy with Ryan Reynolds, Brad Pitt, or Channing Tatum. Also: Will Smith. I will change the male lead's skin colour for YOU, Will! My brother!
No wait. Wrong.
My lover!
But in that, I am just being remarkably trendy because everyone and her rat wants a movie deal.
Guess what, though? Writing a book is hard work. The majority of it lies in the small stuff. You can have the whole story line perfectly pictured.....but you still have to fill in all the opening and closing of doors. All the walking and talking. All the facial expressions.
And there is this constant, nagging feeling that it just ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH.
And THEN you open up your favourite book and read. And you just KNOW it isn't good enough. Because great writers are born, and not made. There is a certain instinctual joining of words and expressing of ideas that only a great writer can thrust on a page.
It was Eights Week. Oxford - submerged now and obliterated, irrecoverable as Lyonnesse - so quickly have the waters come flooding in - Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men still walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days - such as that day - when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft vapours of a thousand years of learning. It was this cloisteral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour.
I read that and I get sucked in, left breathless. What must it feel like to have that flow through your fingers?
Yeah. I wouldn't know.
But that, my friends, is no excuse. Because, in yet another peace of glorious writing, there is this to think about:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Now isn't that just the best motivation to enter your arena - whatever it is?
I say that, having the dead ghosts of the start of about half a dozen books languishing on various external hard-drives in various parts of the world.
This one though....is completely planned and discussed and my main character even has a face. Thus, as my creation, I am rather attached to her. Quite possibly I might not let her die halfway through her story.
Mostly, I am doing it as a discipline. As in: I WILL stick this out for a full 90,000 words, or else I will NEVER EAT CHOCOLATE AGAIN. DAMNIT.
That, my friends, is a threat worth attending to.
Also, I have a
Besides the need for distraction, I just have way too much to say about everything, including the things I know absolutely nothing about, as well the things that are interesting to absolutely no one but myself. I need an outlet. Seriously.
Just ask the man who has to wake up everyday to an email of approximately five pages, possibly even ten, about not much more than the thoughts that have crossed my brain in the two hours since I last spoke to him.
"Do I really have to read this?"
"How is that even a question?"
End of story.
Then there is the fact that I just really want a movie deal. Because that's where the money is, yo. Write a book, get Bradley Cooper to star in the movie version.
I mean, he would be my first choice. Why? I have no idea. (But seriously: RIGHT?!)
I would also be happy with Ryan Reynolds, Brad Pitt, or Channing Tatum. Also: Will Smith. I will change the male lead's skin colour for YOU, Will! My brother!
No wait. Wrong.
My lover!
But in that, I am just being remarkably trendy because everyone and her rat wants a movie deal.
Guess what, though? Writing a book is hard work. The majority of it lies in the small stuff. You can have the whole story line perfectly pictured.....but you still have to fill in all the opening and closing of doors. All the walking and talking. All the facial expressions.
And there is this constant, nagging feeling that it just ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH.
And THEN you open up your favourite book and read. And you just KNOW it isn't good enough. Because great writers are born, and not made. There is a certain instinctual joining of words and expressing of ideas that only a great writer can thrust on a page.
It was Eights Week. Oxford - submerged now and obliterated, irrecoverable as Lyonnesse - so quickly have the waters come flooding in - Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men still walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days - such as that day - when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft vapours of a thousand years of learning. It was this cloisteral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour.
I read that and I get sucked in, left breathless. What must it feel like to have that flow through your fingers?
Yeah. I wouldn't know.
But that, my friends, is no excuse. Because, in yet another peace of glorious writing, there is this to think about:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Now isn't that just the best motivation to enter your arena - whatever it is?
Riveted. You had me at "So,.."
ReplyDeleteThink about the 30 day November challenge, maybe this is your year?
...and her rat?
ReplyDeleteAlso, writers may be born but they certainly must be made. Even people who are born writers will never become great until they work for it; inspiration to mind to pen to page is very rare and, I would argue, always better when tempered by rational thought and the perfecting work of revision. And every great writer actually had to write before he achieved that status—write, edit, rewrite, get piles of rejection letters, revise, and write more, and more, and more. Some people will never be great writers for all the hard work they do, but every great writer certainly has to put in the hard work.
So excited for you Mary!
ReplyDeleteBut writing is a serious business, Flannery O'Connor has me pretty intimidated when she makes the comparison that writers must be disciplined like a saint? Or something like that. You know that comparison?! Plus the personal introspection required is huge. And the discipline. And of course the imagination!