November 6th, 2006
Writing not blogging
Last week should have yielded a post about NaNoWriMo, which kicked off on November 1st but I’m feeling a certain amount of guilt for not signing up this year. Ann is taking part, so are Claire, Patry and thousands of other demented folk who’ve agreed to try and bash out a 50,000 word novel in a month (I don’t think Hesitant Hack is participating, but she’s a perenially productive soul anyway). Just when I thought I had successfully, if a little sheepishly, sidestepped a bout of creativity, a couple of propitious things happened over the weekend that have served to resurrect not so much a fire, but a tealight, in my belly about sitting down to write some fiction.
Firstly, a chance encounter with another journalist over the weekend. A chap who is not only exceptionally talented in his day job, but is full of erudite advice on non-journo writing and is an avid scribbler himself. Whether we’ve been on the radio together or bumped into each other at a gig, a few minutes in his company is the equivalent of a creative injection or a verbal arse-kicking that’s unintentional and carries no pressure: except a self-induced urge to dash home, lock myself in a room and turn into the fourth Bronte. Blogging is one of modernity’s worst time-sponges, this I know, but my journalist friend also pointed out that writing a couple of substantial emails a day amounts to a not insignificant word count. A word count that could be directed elsewhere.
Later the same day while leap-frogging around various blogs, I discovered John Baker’s blog, a fantastic compendium of writing, advice and creative rumination. His ‘Learning to Write’ posts are snappy kickstarters and and part six deals with story openings and quotes Poe’s “How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings?” line.
Yesterday’s Observer published Paul Auster’s acceptance speech for the Spanish literary prize, the Prince of Asturias Prize for Letters, which he won earlier this year. It’s rousing, encouraging and peppered with an undercurrent of “C’mon, you can do it, all of you!” that has a positively narcotic effect on aspiring writers.
“I don’t know why I do what I do. If I did know, I probably wouldn’t feel the need to do it. All I can say, and I say it with utmost certainty, is that I have felt this need since my earliest adolescence. I’m talking about writing, in particular, writing as a vehicle to tell stories, imaginary stories that have never taken place in what we call the real world. Surely it is an odd way to spend your life - sitting alone in a room with a pen in your hand, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, struggling to put words on pieces of paper in order to give birth to what does not exist - except in your head. Why on earth would anyone want to do such a thing? The only answer I have ever been able to come up with is: because you have to, because you have no choice.
If you read any of Auster’s non-fiction, particularly The Red Notebook or The Art of Hunger, Auster makes the art - or even the mechanics - of writing sound so simple: write what you know, look at the everyday, coincidence is a huge part of all of our stories.
So, I’m torn between three types of writing, two of which are so very public - work and this blog - and the private kind (creative stuff) that gets relegated below the other two. Prioritising is difficult - all writers know the fear of the blank page, the empty screen, especially when blogging is the ultimate in displacement activity, like when I used to rearrange my CD collection instead of studying for college exams.
For the moment, I won’t give up blogging completely, nor do I want to turn into Orhan Pamuk, who seems to spend too much time alone with his thoughts than out experiencing the world (Guardian Review, October 28th, not up on the site yet) but somewhere in between might be more agreeable. In that sense, I can relate to Gloria Steinhem when she said “Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.”
Update: John Baker mailed after this post to say he reads this blog. Bizarre.
November 6th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Can’t agree with you about blogging being the ultimate displacement activity. It’s a new medium and as full of potential as cinema and photography were when they came about. Nobody would ever say that keeping a diary is a displacement activity. Or hournalism. And blogging is in many ways a combination of both. Certainly agree that it’s about prioritising. There are only so many hours in the day after all. But aren’t all dedicated acts of writing helpful in crafting a style? Andrew Sullivan is one of the most productive bloggers and he’s just published a 300 page book about Conservstism in the US. I’ve been reading his blog daily for the last 3 years so I’m kind of amazed as to where he found the time.
As for the time given to emails being better spent, again I disagree. Some of the writing I’ve taken most time over these last 8 months has been for emails. And there’s a great satisfaction to be felt that somebody is enjoying reading what I’ve taken the time to set down for them. My brother’s approach is to write one general email and personalise the heading and ending. I’ve tried it myself but have found that if I’m not writing for one person in particular, it just doesn’t come out right. You could say then that fiction writing is like writing emails to yourself in some ways. I bet Auster would agree.
November 6th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
I don’t deign to speak for every blogger, but I’ve heard quite a few (who happen to be writers/photographers) refer to blogging as displacment. It soaks up time, particularly for people with a creative urge, whether we like it or not. Blogging and keeping a diary are synonmous for some, but I have written diaries and it’s not at all akin to blogging - the two processes are completly different, as are the end results.
As for ALL writing contributing towards a style, perhaps, but I don’t think so. A large part of this blog is about inculcating information, not about presenting stories, so everything from tone, language, delivery is different in the two medium. Again, that’s just me.
The point about emails is about saving time and I think it’s a valid point, as someone who seems to be perpetually time poor. I can’t help but think who’s going to remember (yourself included) a lovingly crafted 1500 word email? I’d rather write a blog post or a short story - at least it seems to have some semi-permanence. It might be something I return too, I don’t think I’ve ever found myself scouring the sent box in my email. Fiction writing for me, could never be like writing emails to myself.
Wow, that syndicated email concept of your bro sounds very impersonal - it almost negates the value (as you correctly point out earlier)about the merit of writing something that the recipient gets pleasure from.
Is “hournalism” a typo or intended?
November 6th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
I read Paul Auster’s speech this morning and loved it. He is one of my favourite authors and I also adored the book he edited, “True Tales of American Life”, which really illustrates how remarkable coincidences can affect everyone in their lives. Some of the coincidences in that anthology are so ridiculous that a novelist would hesitate to use them in a novel but they just serve to illustrate how much stranger truth is than fiction!
Havving just finished draft 1 of my first novel (YAYYY - 14 months later) I don’t know how anyone could find the time to work at a full-time job, write creatively AND write a blog at the same time. I find it hard enough, after working 9 hours a day and commuting for 2, to sit down in front of my laptop at home and feel motivated to get the requisite 500-1000 words done a night. In my opinion, I reckon blogging is probably taking up time that you could definitely use to write creatively Sinead. However I hesitate to say that, as I love reading your blog and would hate if you discontinued it!
November 6th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
hournalism is a typo. What I mean about fiction writing being like writing emails to yourself is that in the same way that it’s important in writing an email to have its reader in mind, the person you have in mind when you write fiction is yourself. I think that’s what Auster and so many other writers who’ve taken the time to discuss their craft say. They write for themselves. They write because they have to, and if they didn’t, they’d go crazy or something.
That is not to dismiss the role of the reader, who at the same time rewrites the text for themself.
I do not mean to say that writing fiction is similar to writing letters/emails.
Nevertheless I stand by my point on email writing, today’s equivalent of letter writing. Letter writing is an art form. Think how many writers’ correspondence is published posthumously. Ronald Reagan’s standing went up considerably when his letters were published. Remember the letter signed by Abraham Lincoln that was used at the start of Saving Private Ryan. I’m not equating fiction and letter writing, but I believe the latter is as much an art form as the former.
You keep a sent box?????????
November 6th, 2006 at 2:46 pm
Alex,
Do you think that discipline and persistence is the answer to actually finishing something? What do you do on evenings where you just can’t face writing?
Am so delighted you’ve reached the end of the first draft. I know how much you’ve been slogging at it - and in between being a superstar DJ in London.
Paul,
Pity - thought “hournalistm” was a clever pun on how much my work takes up my time.
I’m with you on the lost art of letter writing. I still write them occasionally and regularly get them (from a mutual friend of ours) which I love. No email could ever replace the feel of an envelope, a handwritten note. Virginia Woolf’s letters are an amazing haul, not so much because of the personal element but due to the amount she wrote to others about writing, characters, plot development and her craft in general. Reading her collected letters is akin to doing a creative writing course.
Sent box - of course! I have a propensity to be a scatterbrain, so it’s mainly for work stuff. It’s due a seismic purge any day now…
November 6th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
Am absolutely certain that persistence is the key and I think anyone involved in a creative profession would say the same. It’s enjoyable work, but it’s still WORK! 40% of the time I can’t face writing but I just turn on the laptop and “show up at the page” as they put it! Most of the time I find that after a while I get back into it and it’s no hardship. (Some of the time it is hardship so then I just go watch C.S.I.!) However perhaps having a job you like is a hindrance - I can’t stand my 9-5 job and the thought of doing it for the rest of my life makes me even more motivated to finish my novel and persist until I get something published even if that takes years.
November 6th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
This is one of those where feel I’m intruding by commenting: Alex’s comment reminds me of something Neil Gaiman said- that mostly writing is about turning up. Since hearing it put that simply I’ve been ‘turning up’ a lot more. It’s still a drain some nights, I still rearrange my books an awful lot but progress is being made. I quite like my nine to five but sometimes (on the more satisfying evenings) it just seems to get in the way. Anyone else ever find that at 2am,when you have to be up first thing but it’s going well so don’t want to stop, this whole fiction thing can sometimes seem like an unhealthy compulsion?
Thanks for the Paul Auster bit!
November 6th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
Sinead, great post. I wish I deserved the productive tag, but apart from that it hits the nail on the head where the tension of different types of writing is concerned. I’m preparing a post on something similar myself - I’ve actually started to use a very clunky manual typewriter for my writing, because it encourages a completely forward-moving writing process - no editing, no inserting, no switching between windows, and certainly no bloody internet. When I moved here I decided not to get a television, because I wanted to work without distraction…little did I know that having wireless broadband would prove a much, much worse distraction. As for journalism, it saps the energy - but only if you let it, I think. And this year, I’m teaching and correcting reams of papers as well as trying to write. My head feels in tatters most of the time, but I agree with Alex. It’s about getting in front of the screen, turning up for your day’s work, and writing no matter what. I think that as journalists we have the one advantage of being much less afraid of the blank page than writers who don’t write every day for a living. You know that the only way to get something started is to tear into that white page; you do it all the time, and what looks like a terrible opening line doesn’t have to remain your opening line, but you have to write it just to get into the task. I know a lot of my colleagues on the MFA course find it a lot more difficult to get started. So that’s one reason to be positive.
Good luck with your creative work. It will happen when you’re ready for it to happen. It sounds like you’re getting very close to that point now, if not already there.
November 6th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
Prioritising can be difficult, especially when you write for a living. Of course, I write boring stuff for a living, so I feel a further knife in the back of my creativity sometimes.
That’s why NaNoWriMo has been so fantastic - it’s like turning on a creativity faucet. Letting go, turning off the internal editor and the Mean Writing Teacher, and just pouring out words. It’s exciting and fun. Now, I’m not fooling myself, I know I’m not going to have a publish-able book on 30 November. But I bet, with some careful editing and hard work, I might have one early next year, all from the raw material and energy of November.
I say, go for it!
November 6th, 2006 at 11:58 pm
Agree with much of what’s been said here. Have been arguing with myself about blogging = displacement. But it may allow the emergence of a different voice from within and, in the end, it is writing.
November 8th, 2006 at 12:08 am
Thanks for those links Sinéad, I need all the arse-kicking/rousing narcotics I can get this month.
I think I spent a large portion of this year of blogging telling myself I was “honing my writing” when really I was just avoiding the scary long-form stuff. NaNo is my way of forcing my hand. Of course I’m already 2000 words behind schedule and playing catch up so we’ll see how it goes.
November 8th, 2006 at 12:58 am
[…] I’m going to hazard a generalisation here and guess that a lot of bloggers harbour a secret wish to write a novel. I know it won’t apply to everyone but I’m guessing there’s a lot of us. I hate admitting it, mostly because it seems like everyone and their maiden aunt is working on the next New York Times bestseller these days and, let’s face it, until you’ve done it you’re just one of a million wannabes. Sinéad’s post about blogging and writing struck a chord with me because I know that I’ve been using blogging as an excuse to avoid writing anything longer. A blog post is quick and you get instant feedback and you move on to the next subject, like a quick writing fix. Actually sitting down day after day to extract something long enough to call a novel is a totally different animal. […]