The second blog of the month is by Dexter Petley, a successful author who also works as an editor and adviser for new writers.
Amongst his acclaimed works are a literary noir whodunnit, Little Nineveh (Polygon 1995), Joyride (Fourth Estate, 1999), and White Lies (Fourth Estate 2003). He’s a regular on the cult website www.caughtbytheriver.com
TIME AND MOTION
Time is the novel’s greatest enemy. The time it takes, the time it occupies and even the time it represents. We often read that so and so is a “full-time” writer. And then we read their novels and wonder why, therefore, they didn’t take that luxury of available time to get it right instead of rushing it out. I don’t know if it’s rat-race ethics or just the cruise control on the Microsoft treadmill, but when I urge clients to take their time on the re-write they seem to hear a starting pistol. Three weeks later, whizz-bang-pop, they send me a wonky new version that’s still smoking.
There are very understandable reasons for attempting to write faster than your own shadow. Encouragement is a wonderful thing. It’s a life-saver to the struggling writer. When it appears, we tend to think of it as fickle, ephemeral, a light which will fade. Struggling writers are not used to attention. So when we get it, we act like dogs chasing a stick.
In my own apprentice days I too was eager and trigger happy. I can categorically say it got me nowhere. It merely rejected the encouragement given by ignoring the details, the small print, the wisdom. I had all the time in the world too; in the 1980s you wrote novels on the dole, hammering holes in scrap-paper on great iron framed machines.
Time has not changed; the time a novel needs to be written doesn’t change. Whatever you hear, the ability to rattle off twenty-thousand words a day is no more useful than being a pie eating champion. What may have changed is that today we can write at miraculous, reckless speeds. But it’s like writing on a simulator. Cut and paste is an illusion. When I say re-write, I mean word by word, sentence by sentence.
Why, when much of the novel might remain unaltered?
Well, the same reason a singer performs the whole song night after night. Voice, and because there is no short cut to the whole story.
In the typewriter age we had no choice. It was an honest job, typing; we sculpted those damned novels with bleeding fingers. But the beauty of it was the focus and concentration to be had; the intimacy we had with our text. The tactile engagement we had with our craft. We felt like writers, not IT users. That craft, the progress of it, was visible and satisfying. I fear that’s missing these days. You’re supposed to be writing, but between sentences there’s shopping on Ebay, someone’s cursed Youtube link, an email to read… In other words, it’s not just distraction, it’s squandering the writing time. It shows up in the finished work. Making up time with cut and paste or a few days spilling the midnight oil is no substitute for the slow fuse, the whole song.
Re-writing a novel from scratch is to reclaim it. Just fixing the leaks doesn’t prevent it caving in later. In typewriter mode (unplug the bloody modem at least) you recover the voice, and control the dogs pulling at your leash. Suddenly a year is well spent. And it should be a year at least. Good fiction needs time in the bottle before drinking. That time includes, just as essentially, time off; time for gaining distance and a cold heart, or just forgetting. It takes me between 5-10 years to write a novel. In that time there might be 14 drafts of the word for word kind. Each novel leapfrogs over the other, so one novel finally come out every four years.
The simplest advice is often the best: don’t ignore professional advice for a start. Take your time. If you haven’t time, all the more reason. I know many writers have full-time jobs or demanding commitments which make writing time a rare luxury. The temptation to be over-productive is an attractive one. It so easily becomes a race with time. When a novel is finished, no one will praise it because you bashed out the first draft in 3 months and the re-write in a week. Remember, a novel is a two headed monster. The first breathes white heat, sleepless nights, death-pacts with the muse. The second is a cold blooded surgeon, a waiting game, the playing hard to get. Successful writers have two heads; they’re the difference between interesting and great.
Dexter Petley
Reblogged from http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/blog/time-motion-by-dexter-petley/
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