"I am a novelist...I know about slowness"
I read the most extradordinary essay this weekend - so perfect, I wish I could cut and paste it right here into my blog, and then I would be done. But because I can't do that, I'll talk about why I think Graham Swift's essay "Words Per Minute" in this week's New York Times Book Review beautifully describes the slowness associated with writing a novel, and how many novelists must "form their personal pacts in some way with the slowness of their craft."
For a long time, I thought I was a fast writer. I have memories of writing short stories for workshops in one sitting: I would start in the late afternoon, then keep writing all the way through the night, until the next morning when I was done. The beauty of writing this way was that you could keep the entire story arc intact and in your head -- you could keep the "flow" going.
Well, two things changed this flow. One, I had a family, and I discovered I could no longer park myself in front of the computer for twenty straight hours. Two, I began writing novels.
Novels cannot be written in one sitting. Or correction. I cannot write novels in one sitting. I don't have the time or the stamina. Nor do I have the whole story in my head. Sometimes I think I do; then when I write, I discover the real story along the way. Often, the final meaning of a scene presents itself after writing it three different ways, after deleting an entire chapter, or after waiting for several months because life's interuptions force you to put away the manuscript. But it's okay because you go back and discover what was lurking in your sub-conscious, or your main character's sub-conscious, and you find a fantastic solution to a section of the book that had been alluding you for so long.
Like in Graham Swift's essay, I also hear of novelists who adhere to a "rate of production" (his quotes). But I don't think I will ever be that kind of writer, who writes a book a year. Sometimes I wish I could write faster, but at the end of the day, I don't really believe I wish I could produce more. For me, each novel is a finite expedition, and the hours I pour into the writing of a book can't be sped up. There are days I can't do the work, and I'm okay with that. Some days I show up for the writing, but it turns out the writing isn't showing up for me. So I stop. Because I think that is the way to respond to art -- as a calling, and not a schedule.
I feel like it's an unpopular thing to say that -- and most likely, some of my fellow writers who are able to produce at a faster rate owe it to their unflagging determination to work under all conditions. I admire them fully, but I could never be like them. And perhaps I have the luxury of being slow, because I have the financial and emotional support of family to give me the gift of time.
For others like me, who are slow writers, who take years to produce a single book, I can only say that we are not truly slow. It's our books, and our art, which demand that amount of time. And instead of devaluing it, we should savor that time spent.
Graham Swift compares the slowness of writing compared with the speed of reading -- how as authors, we might spend days working on a single passage that a reader will read in a matter of seconds. But he says this is not something to despair over because a novel can be a "time-suspending experience that stays with [readers] well afterthey've closed the book."
So hurray for slowness! Hurray for novels and other artistic endeavors that take their time.
For a long time, I thought I was a fast writer. I have memories of writing short stories for workshops in one sitting: I would start in the late afternoon, then keep writing all the way through the night, until the next morning when I was done. The beauty of writing this way was that you could keep the entire story arc intact and in your head -- you could keep the "flow" going.
Well, two things changed this flow. One, I had a family, and I discovered I could no longer park myself in front of the computer for twenty straight hours. Two, I began writing novels.
Novels cannot be written in one sitting. Or correction. I cannot write novels in one sitting. I don't have the time or the stamina. Nor do I have the whole story in my head. Sometimes I think I do; then when I write, I discover the real story along the way. Often, the final meaning of a scene presents itself after writing it three different ways, after deleting an entire chapter, or after waiting for several months because life's interuptions force you to put away the manuscript. But it's okay because you go back and discover what was lurking in your sub-conscious, or your main character's sub-conscious, and you find a fantastic solution to a section of the book that had been alluding you for so long.
Like in Graham Swift's essay, I also hear of novelists who adhere to a "rate of production" (his quotes). But I don't think I will ever be that kind of writer, who writes a book a year. Sometimes I wish I could write faster, but at the end of the day, I don't really believe I wish I could produce more. For me, each novel is a finite expedition, and the hours I pour into the writing of a book can't be sped up. There are days I can't do the work, and I'm okay with that. Some days I show up for the writing, but it turns out the writing isn't showing up for me. So I stop. Because I think that is the way to respond to art -- as a calling, and not a schedule.
I feel like it's an unpopular thing to say that -- and most likely, some of my fellow writers who are able to produce at a faster rate owe it to their unflagging determination to work under all conditions. I admire them fully, but I could never be like them. And perhaps I have the luxury of being slow, because I have the financial and emotional support of family to give me the gift of time.
For others like me, who are slow writers, who take years to produce a single book, I can only say that we are not truly slow. It's our books, and our art, which demand that amount of time. And instead of devaluing it, we should savor that time spent.
Graham Swift compares the slowness of writing compared with the speed of reading -- how as authors, we might spend days working on a single passage that a reader will read in a matter of seconds. But he says this is not something to despair over because a novel can be a "time-suspending experience that stays with [readers] well afterthey've closed the book."
So hurray for slowness! Hurray for novels and other artistic endeavors that take their time.