Since you went away the days grow long
And soon I'll hear old winter's song
But I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall
Autumn Leaves (Songwriters: Jacques Prévert / Johnny Mercer / Joseph Kosma)
In those hazy late-Summer days, as our overgrown meadow called out to be shorn, as apples provided a preserver’s windfall, and the lure of warm afternoon cycling outbid the call to penmanship, my words deserted me. As Nat King Cole croons us into my favourite season, the seasonal words he sings strike a melancholic chord when I apply them to my absent writing.
‘Since you went away (dear Words) the days grow long’ …
I always think I should be more purposeful about writing. More productive, perhaps.
But this project, this exhortation to the creative soul hiding deep inside me, runs to its own rhythm. From May to September last year this late-blooming attempt to call words to order burst forth, flooding pages with short tales. Prompts abounded, inspiration was everywhere I turned, and pages were filled.
Meanwhile, a manuscript lay dormant in a desk drawer, nearly 80,000 words just resting up, day dreaming about the future. Flash fiction winked at me, catching my eye with its well-turned ankle … 100 words of this, 50 words of that. There was an occasional flight of fancy with pictures painted in 1000 words. But mostly it was the short stuff. A manuscript, far less a ‘novel’ seemed too huge an undertaking, too many words to wrestle into submission.
Getting back into things after a month away (pedalling to and from Wales from our home in rural France), I focused on two longer stories, entries for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. The words flowed easily enough but I was intent on cutting them, sharpening up the sentences. I became more of a sculptor than a builder. Distractions were removed, including the temptation to knock out a slick but trivial piece of ‘flash fiction’. Perhaps then I could finally get my head down and turn out something of substance. Apologies to
and for ignoring a series of excellent prompts. There has been method in my madness.Reflection
Is there a chance, a possibility, that short stories became a hiding place for me?
Perhaps flash fiction was a convenient mask to wear while I summoned up the courage to saddle up the elephant in the room. An inconvenient truth in a convenient mask; an unattractive character dressed to deceive at the Venetian masquerade ball, perhaps? But, who’s to say, that early tuning might be the warm up for the concert hall symphony.
I am no Murakami but I like the notion of ‘one thing leads to another’:
“A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, ‘Hey, this is no time for sleeping! You can’t forget me, there’s still more to write!’ Impelled by that voice, I would find myself writing a novel. In this sense, too, my short stories and novels connect inside me in a very natural, organic way.”
– Haruki Murakami
Where are you heading with this, I hear you ask. Surely, as it says on the tin, you expect me to ‘Just Write, Right’.
And that would be an excellent point to make, dear reader.
So, here’s my question for you … when did you last treat yourself to time set aside for writing?
I have decided to take my manuscript on a short holiday, a bit of time away together. The apartment is booked and the historic maritime town of Rochefort awaits. Perhaps I should check if there is a literary connection to be found in the streets around the port but even if there were I doubt it would impact on my own writing. The point is to commit. It is an opportunity to declare (quietly to myself) that I am a writer and it is good essential to set time aside to put words down on paper. I don’t know about you but I do some of my best thinking in the outdoors; this ‘writing retreat’ will therefore be bookended by vigorous activity - 107 kilometres there, and - not surprisingly - the same distance back. I have a plan to explore the area on two wheels in the mornings thus freeing up the afternoons and evenings to tap away on my keyboard. The apartment has a kitchen but refuelling after exercise may be better served by a seafood supper or a carb-loaded pizza.
‘Starving artist' is acceptable at age 20, suspect at age 40, and problematical at age 60.
Robert Genn
* to be clear, I am only 59 but Mr Genn makes a very good point
Back to the manuscript then. I will take it with me, all 161 pages of it, every one of the 76,000 words. It should slip into that flat pocket at the back of my sacoche (my saddle bag) without compromising the space set aside for notebooks, novels and reference books. I guess it will be travelling as a ‘presence’ too, as the reason for the trip. The purpose, if you will. But when I talked previously about editing, honing a submission into its final form, I was not talking about this draft. Because I re-read it recently and it is what Anne Lamott would call a ‘really, really shitty first draft’. I mean to say, it is probably a little worse than that. A lot worse.
That said, the ideas are okay. The characters are interesting. There’s a story in that manuscript just itching to escape the straitjacket of that “really VERY shitty draft”.
Here’s the radical plan.
[takes a deep breath and says out loud] I am a better writer now than I was when I wrote that draft. I pantsed it over 80 days, flinging words and ideas at the screen in a fit of ‘two bad pages a day’. It’s hardly the recipe for the perfectly risen tale of a soufflé, a gloriously runny chocolate fondant of a story, or a searing novel that you have a medium rare stake in.
I’m going all in for a re-write.
There, I said it. Don’t tell the manuscript, but it doesn’t make it.
Spoiler Alert: it comes a cropper in the Preface. The manuscript is the dead body in the author’s apartment with a police investigator’s line drawn under it. And we all know the ending. The author done it. The writer did away with his loved one.
“In writing, you must kill all your darlings”
William Faulkner
If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.
Arthur Quiller-Couch
That’s it then. This is a public declaration that I am back on the job and taking it seriously. This is me saying out loud that I am a writer and I’m taking myself off for a few days to do the most writerly of things … write.
No fiddling around the edges, no tweaks and adjustments, and no holding too tight to ‘my darlings’.
This is where it starts.
But what did you write, Barrie?
Alright, so I didn’t entirely eschew the short form tale. The lure of ‘Fifties by the Fire’ drew me, a moth to a flame:
Dreamer (fiction)(50 words)
I caught the salesman’s eye.
“5-2-6 horsepower from the V8 Voodoo, nought to sixty in four seconds.” Now he cannot deny I know the mighty Mustang. “Six speed, man, stiffened chassis”, I added, “How much for cash?”
“Keep dreaming, son, even your Dad’s pocket money won’t stretch to this beauty.”
“Write a short story every week. It’s not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.”
― Ray Bradbury
Inspired by ‘Paris 59’, a dreamy photograph by Saul Leiter, I penned an imaginary letter on behalf of Barbara:
And finally, the excellent
reminded me this week to keep reading words by authors like Booker Prize winner Paul Lynch, whose lyrical prose in ‘Prophet’s Song’ was an inspiring highlight of my reading year in 2023. Perhaps I should make room in the saddlebag for my copy.Until the next time, happy writing (and reading)
Barrie
Sounds like you've been asking many questions of your writer self these last few months, Barrie. I'm sure it can only make you a better writer, whatever final form the novel and the writing that fills it takes. Just Write, Right might be turning into Just Edit, Innit?