There are few forces in my life stronger than manuscript avoidance. Whenever I go down an online research vortex – researching cameras, researching woodworking tools, researching different types of attic insulation – it’s usually because I’m avoiding the manuscript. Sometimes the only way I make tedious phone calls is if I’m making them instead of working on the novel.
The avoidance is most intense at a certain stage of writing: I’ve already written some words, but they’re not in any shape to revise. What I mean by that is that they’re more a messy brainstorm, an extended outline (or multiple possible outlines). I generate a ton of words so I can find the beats to the scene or chapter, so I can figure out what the story is about. Or try to, at least.
The main reason the avoidance is so intense, I think, is because I’ve done it before. Done this writing thing. When I take on new hobbies, learn new skills, I’m totally fine much more okay with failure. But with writing, I tell myself, You’ve published several books. You should be better at this by now.
How far do I have to get into a book before I remember this lesson – that I have to re-learn how to write each book?
But when I really accept it, accept with my whole being that to write a new book is to learn an entirely new skill, a entirely new process, the task becomes exciting again. I get to play. I get to try out new ways of going about my writing! If they don’t work, then that’s a good lesson. And maybe they will work, someday, for a different book.
Right now, for this specific novel, I’ve started rewriting my typed vomit draft longhand. In hopes of forcing slowness, of attuning myself more closely to the aftervibe. If, as I wrote in that last issue, it’s too easy for me as a reader or viewer to lose myself in the moment-to-moment experience, then it’s even easier to get lost as the first reader – as the author.
Speaking of aftervibes, a reader, Varsha, sent me this, from an essay by Virginia Woolf (emphasis mine):
The book upon which we have spent so much time and thought fades entirely out of sight. But suddenly, as one is picking a snail from a rose, tying a shoe, perhaps, doing something distant and different, the whole book floats to the top of the mind complete. Some process seems to have been finished without one’s being aware of it. The different details which have accumulated in reading assemble themselves in their proper places. The book takes on a definite shape; it becomes a castle, a cowshed, a gothic ruin, as the case may be. Now one can think of the book as a whole, and the book as a whole is different, and gives one a different emotion, from the book received currently in several different parts. Its symmetry and proportion, its confusion and distortion can cause great delight or great disgust apart from the pleasure given by each detail as it is separately realized. Holding this complete shape in mind it now becomes necessary to arrive at some opinion of the book’s merits, for though it is possible to receive the greatest pleasure and excitement from the first process, the actual reading, though this is of the utmost importance, it is not so profound or so lasting as the pleasure we get when the second process—the after reading—is finished, and we hold the book clear, secure, and (to the best of our powers) complete in our minds.
March Mending Circle
The second Tuesday of the month is upon us. Join me this Tuesday (March 11) from 7:30PM–9:00PM Eastern for another Digital Mending Circle, which is
a virtual co-working session for the kinds of oft-neglected maintenance tasks that accrue around our digital lives. Instead of darning socks and patching jeans, we update personal websites, delete unused accounts, work on side projects, or even just catch up on email.
If you attended February’s DMC, you already have the Zoom link. If you’re new, just reply to this email to get it. I plan to use the time to update my site and Sunday letter template to include the new Patreon option for Dumpling Club memberships.
Speaking of writing longhand, I finished The Power Broker, and then promptly read Working, Robert Caro’s book about writing his books. Caro does his first drafts longhand on white legal pads:
[My problem in school] was it was too easy for me to write. I could write very fast without thinking it through […] I realized that if I wanted to write a book I had to think things through.
Then he types those longhand drafts into his Smith Corona Electra 210 typewriter:
Computers are fast, typewriters are slower. It’s not always a virtue to be fast.
That’s not at all to fetishize the romance of typewriters:
Everybody has to figure out things for themselves in writing, that’s what I believe.
All of the above nuggets are from this three minute interview.
If you want more than three minutes, try the documentary Turn Every Page, which overlaps some with Working. I, for one, am quite enamored by this yellow pinboard wall in Caro’s office.
Turn Every Page is about Robert Caro, yes, but it’s more about the relationship between Caro and his editor, Robert Gottlieb – a titan in his own field. It’s a special relationship, the one between an author and their editor (hi Jess!).
That’s all for this issue. I haven’t worked on the novel yet today (see what I mean?) so now I’ll going to go fail my way into a new draft.
Jack