“How does a book or piece of writing
begin to take shape in your imagination?
How
do you work – do you plan carefully or explore in the dark, trusting the
process?
Do writers have any moral
responsibility in their work, wider than fidelity to their personal vision?”
I was recently invited by a friend and colleague to
respond to questions about the writing process. As I worked through my answers
to ten questions I found that the responses engaged me in a way I had not
expected and opened me to some fundamentals about ‘my’ process that I enjoyed and that surprised me. The questions and answers follow an attribution
to the source (ARVON and The Write Factor) of the exercise. – Robert Donohue
“ARVON, A place where people come
together as a community of Writers”
Arvon is a UK creative writing charity http://www.arvonwritingroom.org/admin/
which in partnership with The Write
Factor - http://www.thewritefactor.co.uk/
- have issued an invitation to writers to respond to questions that get to important
elements of the writing process.
Those ARVON questions and my responses
follow -
1. How does a book or piece of writing
begin to take shape in your imagination? Do you feel your writing is a process
of inventing or discovering?
Response - Personal recollections spur me to write; incidents in
which I have had some strong feeling form the core of that encouragement. When I’m
able organize a rough outline or some meaningful value to my remembrance and
can follow events from beginning to end, with a measure of tension or colorful
images of place, either intact or concocted, I am moved at the prospect and start
building the set into a piece. Discovery is the larger part at the beginning of
the process but in the end the early bits and pieces fall away and invention takes
over. Sometimes as I invent, the origin of the original event will resurface to
challenge what I’m building or to correct it with a more significant truth; I
will respect that discovery and bring it into the invention.
2. What things trigger your imaginative
process (for example, significant personal experiences, particular people,
places, objects, dream imagery, myths, history, etc)?
Response - Historic events and personal stories stir my imagination.
A photograph from an American Civil War battlefield, followed by a visit to
that place, followed by an anecdote I heard of General Ulysses Grant and his
young son upon their arrival in Washington D.C., followed by a dream image in
which I saw myself as a subordinate of a leader in a hopeless situation,
combined over a long period of four years to help form the foundation of a
novel (that’s yet to be written) of the personal history and observations of a
fictional character during the final thirteen months of the American Civil War.
It was dream imagery, involving a monk in Renaissance Italy, and my personal
experiences as a member of a religious community in my youth, and the birthing labor of
a loved niece that began imaginings for the work of my first attempt at writing
a novel. As mentioned in my response to the first question, the specifics of
these elements fell away quickly once the form of the story’s beginning, middle,
and vague end developed, and the work of invention took over.
There has been an
opaque image of my father in the late 1920’s standing outside a building in New
York City late in the evening, waiting for my mother, as he smokes a cigarette and
considers something (no idea at
present what’s in his head) that has been agitating for more than five years
as the foundation of another novel. Like most people, my parents’ early
relationship mystifies me and I am excited at the thought of re-imagining them
under those tense and wonderfully revealing pressures of their separate and
combined psyches. New York City of the 1920’s and early “30’s provides a rich
noir background and I feel very comfortable with the atmospheric intricacies
of that place and time.
3. How do you work - do you plan
carefully or explore in the dark, trusting the process?
Response - I trust the process. I place a spade into the earth and
dig until my arms are tired or the hole feels deep enough. Then I stop and read what’s on the page after
several hours and a few thousand words. I ask if what I’m looking at meets my
criteria for where I believe I wish to be in the story. I prefer that my
stories have short beginnings and long middles in which characters are fleshed
and plot loops take place and which have tumbling endings where I’m able to feel the
movement toward climax and denouement.
I have tried to meticulously plan my
work but I don’t like the act of writing and when I’ve planned to the point that I sort of know where things are to be going my distaste
grows even as I put words on the page and I feel a pressure to get up and make
myself a sandwich.
When I stick to the general feel for where I am in the overall
concept the sense of mystery and invention keep me comfortable enough to keep
digging and piling results into heaps along the trench that I can then sort
afterward.
4. Do you feel in control of your
writing or are you responsive to the requirements of the work as it unfolds?
Response - I sort of feel
in control when editing/cutting. Cutting always feels like pulling a trigger or
plunging a knife somewhere: it’s about death and in that sense it’s clean. I
feel I’m dreaming when I’m discovering or inventing. Like most fiction writers,
I suspect, I have spent long writing periods having fun and believing I was
developing something that would work to my wonderment and the appreciation of
others and then set that work aside as either something for a later incarnation
or an infatuation that I lovingly must leave. I fear control. My experience
with it has been that it provides me more often than not with the illusion of
certainty but that I usually discover that my idea of control extracts a price I
don’t wish to pay in that the work is too often not original or takes a
direction that supports something in my ego and not truth.
5. Do you write a first draft quickly
and then revise it, or build carefully from the start?
Response - Quick first drafts work well at the scene level and
sometimes at the chapter level. I cannot imagine completing a quick first draft
for a novel. I wouldn’t recognize anything past the first chapter and by the
time I’d completed the full first draft of the novel I wouldn’t recall what I
actually had in mind in the early chapters. I do build scenes carefully,
working to be sure that the scene serves to move and that the characters are as
clear as possible about what they want and that all decisions as to who and
what will be satisfied and why have been made and either delivered or held back
deliberately. I trust that what I don’t know about the story will be revealed
as I move forward and try not to worry when that revelation will occur.
6. How do you deal with blocks in the
writing process?
Response - I abandon aspiration to create and let the moment have
its way. This assumes a short block of time of course. When I’m unable to work for
extended periods, i.e. several days, I sometimes resort to research for existing
narrative or edit a short story or write poetry or I read challenging fiction.
There is something about being at work on writing that gives me confidence that
the desire will return and the action of putting new words to the page will
pick up. I sometimes have experienced very long periods where I was unable to
do new work. At these times I will look for a writing workshop or tutorial and
will sit with other writers offering my work for critique or participating in
writing prompts or listening to experienced writers talk about craft.
7. Do you write in service of any
particular values?
Response - I value the idea of the story as a dream and am less
interested in relating facts or fixed objects and firm story elements than I am
of establishing place and rendering character interiors in that space.
I hold to the idea of
authenticity and don’t feel comfortable mimicking or copying. I’m sure that I’m
guilty of doing just that but I try to clean my prose and my narrative of
anything resembling other writers’ work. An exception to my 'mimicry' rule has to do with Anton Chekhov: I was gobsmacked at the magic in the
air about Chekhov’s characters, the electric sense of tension that crackled
when lovers met or friends fell out or observers, witnessing the grotesque became what they witnessed. I aspire to infuse some of this kind of feel in the atmospheres
I write.
8. What have you learned from the
practice of your craft?
Response - I have discovered that it is more often the case that I
feel separated from stories I write than I feel connected to them. It’s clear
that I have put the words on the page that appear there but once I’m done with
the work I don’t recognize them as coming from me. I’ve also learned that my
work needs to be protected from other eyes during the birthing period and that
I’m never quite sure when that period ends. This dilemma can be catastrophic if
I move too early. I am constitutionally incapable of being honest about myself
by myself and there are aspects of my work that don’t belong on the page. I
need criticism. But I’m also unable to hear valid criticism when my work hasn’t
developed sufficient breath and voice to dialog with me such that honesty and
authenticity are assured/safe. I have missed brilliant input to my work because
I hadn’t settled my mind and my acceptance into my work sufficiently to listen
from a safe distance; this is also tragic. Picking the right moment to hear and
respecting the work as sturdy enough to survive always challenges me.
9. What is the relationship between the
writer's imagination and that of the reader?
Response - The writer has prepared an invitation for the reader to
attend the retelling of a dream sequence or an event of some importance or
interest, i.e. to take a trip with the writer. The fiction reader owes little
or nothing to the writer other than to open him or her self a smidgeon to the
suspension of disbelief. The writer operates the throttles and steers; he stokes
the engine with coal and warns of hazards ahead. The reader rides. The writer
has a profound responsibility to tell a story with impeccable truth. Accuracy
isn’t the aim; truth is. With or without the reader in mind the writer ought to
carry the responsibility of truth to the story’s purpose and respect for the
reader’s time and effort (and cost/expense) in mind at all times.
10. Do writers have any moral responsibility in their
work, wider than fidelity to their personal vision?
Response – The only moral responsibility I consider in my work is
that I must not lie. My personal vision isn’t sufficient if it conflicts with a
truth that I am aware of and recognize that by pursuing a particular vision I might
create an intellectual hazard for some readers. An extreme example might be if
I were to portray a character as credible – e.g. an authority on European
Fascism in the 20th Century – and supplied him with irrefutable
evidence that the Holocaust had not taken place. If I did this without somehow
discrediting the information or the character I could not proceed with the
story as I envisioned it. Beyond that I don’t feel there is a moral standard
for others and believe every writer needs to develop their own.
