What distinguishes novel writing from story writing (I do both) in terms of the writer's mindset is that with a story you can see the whole work as you're composing it, whereas with a novel you can't see the forest for the trees. Novels, then, take a leap of faith that isn't required for stories (stories pose their own problems, and there are ways in which stories are harder than novels, but the difficulties they pose are different ones). To my mind, a writer needs to spend a couple of years on a book before he knows not whether it's a good novel or a bad novel, but whether it's a novel at all. A person doesn't write a novel. He writes a page a day, half a page a day, erases a page a day, and then only looking back does he determine that what he's composed may in fact be novel.
When I was at Michigan, Richard Ford came to visit. This was shortly after INDEPENDENCE DAY won the Pulitizer, and Ford said a couple of things that really stuck with me. First, he said, you can win the Pulitzer and the page is just as blank the next time around. You're always afraid you can't do it again, that you've been discovered by the fraud police. I hadn't yet published a novel, but this struck me as intuitively true at the time, and I feel this even more so now that I've published two novels. You're always afraid that that's the last good sentence you'll ever write. The other thing Ford said was that even writing a bad novel is a real accomplishment. And I think that's true. The days it takes, the number of pages you have to write--no matter what, it's a monumental task, and I always remind myself of this when I'm working with students--often very talented students--whose books aren't coming together and may never come together. Charles Baxter, a wonderful writer who was my teacher and then colleague at Michigan, has three early novels that didn't work out--they're away in a drawer. I shouldn't speak for Charlie, but I bet he'd tell you that those failed novels were important, that they got him to where he is now. The bad days, in other words, are investments in the good days. The work is never a waste, even if it doesn't make it out into the world.
Thanks for saying that. I guess only writers really understand writing -- how difficult it is. But now I wonder about those novels by Baxter -- how bad could they be?
Posted by: Kit Stolz | November 12, 2007 at 09:10 PM
I can testify to the fear you're talking about. I wrote my first novel after a three year stretch of writer's block and it took me five years. The third novel stalled at the half-way point and again I thought that was me.
Now I'm stuck halfway through my fifth novel and I'm starting to see a pattern. You are quite right when you talk about a commitment. I've already dumped 10000 words on this one and I have serious doubts about the 17000 I replaced them with. And I'm not getting any younger.
Who'd be a writer?
Posted by: Jim Murdoch | November 13, 2007 at 02:20 AM