What They Tell You

What they tell you about writing? Forget it or -if possible- don't listen, don't read and don't believe what they tell you. And they will tell you: a) how to write books and b) how you're going to feel while writing them. It won't be like that  - not because you are better, or worse; but because there aren't any standard scenarios.

I wish someone had told me this, ages ago. Instead here I am, after agonies, finally understanding how I function. It doesn't fit the theory. For example:

The white screen is the scariest thing you'll ever see. The rest is easy.

Not so. The scariest screen I see is the one I wake up to, every day, containing the dreaded draft. Editing is far worse than writing the first draft. White screens; what's not to love? An empty ballroom, yours for the dance. But this crowded muddle?

I scan each page, armed and vigilant, ready for any horror. Precision, progression, adjectives (adverbs are long extinct), suspense, dialogue, darlings*. The trouble is, it feels exactly like crawling in a jungle. Whoever says editing is fun is in fact a caterpillar.

*When I say darlings, as writers will know, I'm not referring to the people who inhabit my heart (and break it occasionally); no, I mean words, sentences, paragraphs, even chapters, that I love and must kill (because they suck). Darlings - in a first draft - are Satan.

Plan your writing - write synopses, back stories, character outlines.

Yeah, you do that. Every time I try, I fall asleep (best case scenario). I have been known to spend days on creating the perfect character outline template. I applied it to six characters. The first was eight pages. The last five - half a page each. None was used in the writing of the book.

I sobbed with tedium writing synopses and planning scenes - drinking the equivalent of the Caspian sea in coffee. The scenes themselves, when I got to them, were nothing like the plan.

And so on. I am doing what needs done, grateful for watermelon, breaks on the stone bench at the top of the land and the delete button. I reached page 103. Toodle-pip.

How People Write in Films

I want to say something about writers in films. I do, because I almost flung my computer at the wall when one such author popped up in a film trailer a few minutes ago; and I remembered all the others.

Writers in films. They sit in their rooms - always a classy mess of manuscripts, crumpled drafts in bins, cups of tea, and always that beautiful, gauzy light streaming through the window. The type for about five seconds, looking serious. A dreamy glance out the window, a bite out of an apple, then back to typing furiously...  until a smile tugs at the corners of their mouths. The light turns golden, the music is turned up and we know they're onto something glorious.

In the next shot they're signing books.

In the meantime, I write and drink coffee and write some more and the light outside my window stays the same for a very long time, and then goes dark. I have moments of passion and joy, I have moments when I don't recall the names of my characters. I don't remember words. I'm not sure about words I use every day. I'm not even sure I can write in English.

I love my story, it's what keeps me here. On occasion I love paragraphs I write, or metaphors, half-lines. When I re-read I find them worthless and pathetic, you know, a bit like those creeps you fancied at school, and made a complete fool of yourself for, until one random day you saw them for what they were. The horrid finality of that moment - the end of a beautiful delusion; I have that feeling about a hundred times every day.

So no more movies with writers. Just get up every day and kill your darlings. 

Mutant

There was a mutant fly in the bathroom yesterday. A no-worries, mostly-fly as it buzzed past my nose. But then it landed on the windowsill and turned into a Gollum of flies. A fast-moving, sideways-sidling dark hornet.

Fine, have the bathroom. I left.

I shouldn't have worried this morning: it was dead, ugly as before and sharp, shimmering with ants. What did they do to it? Bite? Feed on it? Suck it dry? Would Gollum slowly disappear? Dismantled into ant-sized portions and stored?

By noon, disaster: they had tipped the mutant into the bathtub. By nightfall, a rescue squad had been dispatched. They had it and had started the climb up the steep enamel.

With the manuscript, it's worse: I have it, but alive and fighting; and there's still this mountain to climb.