One book of advice about writing I liked was Stephen King: On Writing. He suggests locking the door, unplugging the phone and turning up the music. When you get stuck, he recommends going for a walk with a notebook in hand, so that if an idea comes, you can write it down on the spot. One day he took his own advice, went for a walk along a country road (no sidewalk), and got hit by a car. Laid up in the hospital, he had both new material and time to think. Not recommended for beginners.
Back in the late 70s in divided Berlin, I would conk out at 10 p.m., then get up to cross the border before it closed at midnight. There was no choice – it was a must. Some of my best ideas came to me on the way to the border crossing. Granted, finding an equivalent these days for the Berlin Wall might be a challenge.
Thomas Mann recommended a strict regimen of writing 1,000 words every morning, something he adhered to with military-like discipline. He called it "living like a soldier without being one." A thousand words might not seem like much, but thatʼs how he was able to churn out The Magic Mountain, Dr. Faustus, and Joseph and His Brothers.
Some authors produce great work, paradoxically, when they are cut off from libraries, including their own. The situation forces them to concentrate on whatʼs essential. Erich Auerbach wrote Mimesis under those conditions in Turkey, and Stefan Zweig The World of Yesterday in Brazilian exile. For both of them, it was probably their greatest work.
By the way, my personal list of great novels would definitely include Tristram Shandy.
I wish I could remember who said "You never learn how to 'write a novel.' You only learn how to write the one you're working on." That is certainly the case for me. I worked, nearly full time, on my first novel, Acts of the Apostles, for 4 gruelling years. The first draft of that book took about 3 months to write and I thought it was great. (Spoiler: it wasn't.) But I lucked into getting a great literary agent (Joe Regal) who guided me through several major rewrites and rounds of submissions to NYC publishers. Each draft was better than the one before it. Alas we never got an offer on the book, but I sure learned a lot about writing. One thing I learned was that Joe (who was pretty young but had already worked with several successful novelists) was infallibly correct when he identified something that wasn't working, but that his suggestions for fixing the problem were often wrong. Joe's also a musician, and he has a great ear for when something's out of tune.
I wrote my second book, Cheap Complex Devices, which is my most ambitious book, and, don't tell anybody, my favorite child, almost in one siting. I wrote most of the section 'Notes on the Source Code' starting about 2PM one day and finishing about 8 the next morning. I made a few small revisions, but the published version is pretty much what poured out of me in that one burst of creativity. The Pains also came pretty easily -- and there again I had a great editor guiding me. And writing Biodigital, which is a reimagined Acts of the Apostles -- also under the guidance of an editor (Victoria Blake, of Underland Press) was a pretty straightforward process, akin to what I used to do when writing technical manuals (of which I've written about 40). Acts of the Apostles is kind of a meditation on technology & freedom disguised as a technothriller; Biodigital is just a technothriller. You know that old chestnut,
Q: How do you sculpt an elephant?
A: Get a big hunk of marble and chip away anything that doesn't look like an elephant.
That was pretty much the process we followed transmuting Acts into Biodigital.
All this experience informs how I'm approaching Mountain of Devils, of course, but still, it very much is its own thing, and it is quite insistent, if not about what will be, then at least about what it will not allow me to do with it.
John, procrastination is the name of the game for every writer or aspiring one since the invention of writing, maybe even before that: "Grok, when are you finally going to tell us the story about the big sabre-tooth tiger we hunted down last year?", "Hey, don't stress me out, I'm still researching all the facts, and I have to finish Anne Lamott's 'Bird by Bird'. You don't understand the creative process, you bunch of troglodytes!" I myself have been toying with the idea of authoring the next Great European Novel since my childhood, half a century ago. But the only way of writing the novel is to write the novel, so sit at your desk and tackle down this bitch.
Thank you. Taped to the slanted ceiling above my desk there is a card bearing the words, in my hand, written to me by my friend Geraldine Brooks — whose books these days, which she cranks out about once every 3 years, are automatic worldwide bestsellers: "When there is no wind, row." (I had written to her crybabying about my struggles to get out of my own way, but she wasn't having it.)
Still, in my defense, Your Honor, I would like to make clear that I have, in fact, been working. This book is about (a) a narcissitic man with genius IQ who comes to believe he is some kind of messiah (Meekman) and (b) a young girl who tries to will herself into adulthood in order to become a scientist so that she can save her brother's life, and (c) a kind of almost feral Black kid from Oakland who, though at first antagonistic to Meekman, becomes his first and most ferociously loyal convert, sort of a Paul to Jesus, or a Renfield to Dracula. These are elements of plot which, if not done well, are just schlocky melodrama. I know this because so much of what I've written, and tossed away, has been schlocky melodrama.
So sure, of course I've done plenty of procrastinating. Absolutely. But I've also been chipping away at these challenges, and I really do believe that achieving a great book is within my reach. It's not as if every moment has been wasted.
Nevertheless your injunction, like Geraldine's is 'operational,' as Monty Meekman himself would say. So thank you. I will do that.
One book of advice about writing I liked was Stephen King: On Writing. He suggests locking the door, unplugging the phone and turning up the music. When you get stuck, he recommends going for a walk with a notebook in hand, so that if an idea comes, you can write it down on the spot. One day he took his own advice, went for a walk along a country road (no sidewalk), and got hit by a car. Laid up in the hospital, he had both new material and time to think. Not recommended for beginners.
Back in the late 70s in divided Berlin, I would conk out at 10 p.m., then get up to cross the border before it closed at midnight. There was no choice – it was a must. Some of my best ideas came to me on the way to the border crossing. Granted, finding an equivalent these days for the Berlin Wall might be a challenge.
Thomas Mann recommended a strict regimen of writing 1,000 words every morning, something he adhered to with military-like discipline. He called it "living like a soldier without being one." A thousand words might not seem like much, but thatʼs how he was able to churn out The Magic Mountain, Dr. Faustus, and Joseph and His Brothers.
Some authors produce great work, paradoxically, when they are cut off from libraries, including their own. The situation forces them to concentrate on whatʼs essential. Erich Auerbach wrote Mimesis under those conditions in Turkey, and Stefan Zweig The World of Yesterday in Brazilian exile. For both of them, it was probably their greatest work.
By the way, my personal list of great novels would definitely include Tristram Shandy.
I wish I could remember who said "You never learn how to 'write a novel.' You only learn how to write the one you're working on." That is certainly the case for me. I worked, nearly full time, on my first novel, Acts of the Apostles, for 4 gruelling years. The first draft of that book took about 3 months to write and I thought it was great. (Spoiler: it wasn't.) But I lucked into getting a great literary agent (Joe Regal) who guided me through several major rewrites and rounds of submissions to NYC publishers. Each draft was better than the one before it. Alas we never got an offer on the book, but I sure learned a lot about writing. One thing I learned was that Joe (who was pretty young but had already worked with several successful novelists) was infallibly correct when he identified something that wasn't working, but that his suggestions for fixing the problem were often wrong. Joe's also a musician, and he has a great ear for when something's out of tune.
I wrote my second book, Cheap Complex Devices, which is my most ambitious book, and, don't tell anybody, my favorite child, almost in one siting. I wrote most of the section 'Notes on the Source Code' starting about 2PM one day and finishing about 8 the next morning. I made a few small revisions, but the published version is pretty much what poured out of me in that one burst of creativity. The Pains also came pretty easily -- and there again I had a great editor guiding me. And writing Biodigital, which is a reimagined Acts of the Apostles -- also under the guidance of an editor (Victoria Blake, of Underland Press) was a pretty straightforward process, akin to what I used to do when writing technical manuals (of which I've written about 40). Acts of the Apostles is kind of a meditation on technology & freedom disguised as a technothriller; Biodigital is just a technothriller. You know that old chestnut,
Q: How do you sculpt an elephant?
A: Get a big hunk of marble and chip away anything that doesn't look like an elephant.
That was pretty much the process we followed transmuting Acts into Biodigital.
All this experience informs how I'm approaching Mountain of Devils, of course, but still, it very much is its own thing, and it is quite insistent, if not about what will be, then at least about what it will not allow me to do with it.
John, procrastination is the name of the game for every writer or aspiring one since the invention of writing, maybe even before that: "Grok, when are you finally going to tell us the story about the big sabre-tooth tiger we hunted down last year?", "Hey, don't stress me out, I'm still researching all the facts, and I have to finish Anne Lamott's 'Bird by Bird'. You don't understand the creative process, you bunch of troglodytes!" I myself have been toying with the idea of authoring the next Great European Novel since my childhood, half a century ago. But the only way of writing the novel is to write the novel, so sit at your desk and tackle down this bitch.
Thank you. Taped to the slanted ceiling above my desk there is a card bearing the words, in my hand, written to me by my friend Geraldine Brooks — whose books these days, which she cranks out about once every 3 years, are automatic worldwide bestsellers: "When there is no wind, row." (I had written to her crybabying about my struggles to get out of my own way, but she wasn't having it.)
Still, in my defense, Your Honor, I would like to make clear that I have, in fact, been working. This book is about (a) a narcissitic man with genius IQ who comes to believe he is some kind of messiah (Meekman) and (b) a young girl who tries to will herself into adulthood in order to become a scientist so that she can save her brother's life, and (c) a kind of almost feral Black kid from Oakland who, though at first antagonistic to Meekman, becomes his first and most ferociously loyal convert, sort of a Paul to Jesus, or a Renfield to Dracula. These are elements of plot which, if not done well, are just schlocky melodrama. I know this because so much of what I've written, and tossed away, has been schlocky melodrama.
So sure, of course I've done plenty of procrastinating. Absolutely. But I've also been chipping away at these challenges, and I really do believe that achieving a great book is within my reach. It's not as if every moment has been wasted.
Nevertheless your injunction, like Geraldine's is 'operational,' as Monty Meekman himself would say. So thank you. I will do that.
Geraldine Brooks is sooo right, and I also believe in you and in that crazy, brilliant brain of yours.