Writing

I like writing. I find it challenging, and I like that. Sometimes I find it rewarding, and I like that too. It's frustrations, I've learned to put up with, begrudgingly. Sometimes the words stubbornly refuse to form in my head in a way that says precisely what has already formed in my pre-verbal thought. That's frustrating. But on other occasions, words just magically appear before me quickly, effortlessly, in an unstemmable tide eager to be written down, or exuberantly, like a babbling brook, each one a perfect choice in its specific context, and taken all together, a harmony of sound and image and emotion. Maybe I shouldn't have used the word "babbling" just then, although it does perfectly describe what I have just been doing, so perhaps it was the perfect word to encapsulate a subtext of which I am not yet consciously aware.
I am not a planner. I tried planning a novel once because it seemed a more efficient method of doing what I do, but it wasn't fun. I write as though I am a reader, with that nae fervor of unformed expectations. I don't know what is coming next, and depending on what does come next, I feel something between exhilaration and despair. Exhilaration means "keep that, for the moment, and move on quickly before the muse departs" whereas despair means "okay, take a break, relax, think of other things, then come back to it later and try again."

I try to write what I would like to read if someone else had written it and I had discovered it serendipitously with the feeling of having stumbled on a gem. Of course, I can never truly know what that would be like because I can never not be me; and going back to a work after an absence sufficient to have inaugurated the process of forgetting, I am as likely to find the flaws in it as any gem it might contain. In the work of others, I don't see the flaws as flaws. They are what they are. But in my own work, I always have the feeling I could (and should) have done better.

I like those writers whose work inspires me to think. Spoon-fed stories are not my meal of choice. Writers who follow the well-established rules to churn out sure-fire successes are not my choice of fare. I find that there are three aspects to any novel: (a) plot, (b) character and (c) language. The first two are well-known and broadly understood and I don't intend to discuss them at length except to say that, personally, I prefer to read novels that favour character over plot. This is simply a personal bias and should not be taken as any form of criticism. Both are necessary. But I feel that I might need to clarify what I mean by (c) language.

All novels are written in some form of language. But some writers regard language as they would a public bus: a convenience that enables them to travel from (a) to (b), and once that journey has been achieved, they can disembark and forget about it. But language is capable of doing so much more than simply telling a story. Language can be used to create sound, even if it is only heard in the reader's head. It can create rhythm. Speed. It can create suspense. Intrigue. It can clarify and it can mislead. It can alter or vary the pace at which a story is told. And because there are so many words to choose from it can, in the right hands, create character, set scene, build tension, create expectations, and destroy them. It can make the reader laugh or cry, fill him or her with fear or misgiving, provoke despair or anger. I remember, the first time I read American Pastoral by Phillip Roth. When the character, Rita Cohen, first confronted the protagonist, Swede Levov, I felt the urge to tear open the pages and leap to Swede's defense, such was the power of Roth's language. They were just words. But they were chosen and deployed with such skill, both in the climactic scene itself and in the pages leading up to that moment.

In a motion picture, the director has so many tools to work with in order to create a credible reality but the author has only two: language and punctuation. There is no Foley artist creating sound effects to support the action taking place. There is no musical accompaniment to enhance the dramatic tension. There are no actors to speak the dialogue, to guide the moviegoer on where the emphasis should fall, to illustrate the timing of the repartee or to indicate the delicate nuances of the relationships between the characters. The novelist has to do it all with words and punctuation; and my joy, as a reader, is finding novelists who excel in that art.

I would that I could be one of those novelists. But only time and perseverance will tell if I can.