At 5.30 on Monday I typed the final full stop on my current novel. Well, that's academic, really. What I mean is that I got to the end of this draft; I'll have to go back and edit. But it was a watershed moment: it's been an all-consuming project since I started redrafting in January. My life has been on hold: I have forgotten to pay bills, forgotten to shop for food, been unable to get my head around anything much else, including blogging. I've found it hard to answer emails. Sometimes, when I've turned to tackle writing an article or report, my brain has balked and felt faint, and I've had to kick it forcibly forward. I've had to force myself to read the books for our reading group. I have seen things lying around the house, and the house getting untidier and untidier, but have somehow not had the space in my head to negotiate picking them up and putting them away. I have forgotten to do the laundry and kept finding myself without clean knickers. Every so often we've put up a visitor who comes to work in Manchester a couple of days a week, and taking afternoons out to get the house a bit straight and clean the loo and sinks and get some food in has seemed a ridiculous stress. I have thought of little else; I have woken in the night with new insights, sometimes I haven't slept well because it's been going round and round in my brain. For the first time in my life I have stopped wanting to go out. Every evening I have sat exhausted but on edge, written out but unable to put my mind to anything else, and indeed necessarily thinking of next day's writing, just waiting for bed in order to get up and start again. The whole time I have been writing there has been building work across the road from my writing window, but I haven't even heard the sounds of sawing and drilling and the clanking of the skips coming and going, I've been so involved. It's been impossible, time-wise and in terms of intellectual and creative energy, to keep up promotion of my published books.
I think I've been a bit mad. Today, having finished, I realise that I haven't been standing or sitting straight, I've been physically curled up around this thing I've been brooding and nurturing.
I couldn't have worked like this when I was teaching or when I had children at home. Maybe I would still have done it, but much more slowly, though I doubt it: an earlier draft of this novel was written under such circumstances and it didn't gel, and I had to abandon it until I had better conditions. Of course, it remains to be seen whether this draft works, but I know it's a lot better, more organic, and to achieve that it's needed the time and concentration and peace mourned recently by Carlo Gebler.
And it's been a huge slog. It hasn't felt like it because I've been so driven, but yesterday, the first day after finishing, I found I was exhausted, and had to sleep for most of the afternoon. I know I'm tremendously lucky to have had the chance to work like this, to be doing what I want to do to the exclusion of all else, since most writers don't have the chance, but the fact that it has been a slog and has taken so much out of my life shows that when writers have to work at other things to live, they and their art, as Gebler points out, are under tremendous stress.
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18 comments:
Many many congrats on completing the draft, E - I love the image of you curled round the work as though you are a mother nurturing the child to be... sending lots of love and wishing you fair winds for the redrafting process, as and when.
Yes, I do know what you mean. Life does put art under tremendous stress. And that's why I love the idea of the Medicis, or a lovingly supportive partner. Although even that sort of support doesn't make the rest of life's demands go away, it does help. But I think a retreat like I go to in Ireland is really the best. Too bad we can't just escape to places like that for 6 months at a time. Maybe that's just running away, but "head space" is very hard to come by in real life.
Thanks, V. Yes, Sue - 6-moth retreats would be very nice. although I have this crazy psychological thing about my old writing table...
huge congratulations on draft completion.
Sue, Elizabeth - that's interesting - one of the questions I ask people for my regular interview column is "When you’re writing, would you rather look out at the sea, or in at your thoughts?" It's great to see people's reactions. It varies so much. ome people like to be at home, others like Sue (I always think of the writer in Misery as well, who goes to a log cabin to finish his books) like peace. Others need bustle - I write best outside on a sunny day, sitting in a corner on a busy pavement.
I wonder sometimes if I would be better off if I could write full time, or whether that would just leave me jaded and frustrated that I wasn't doing enough. I get 1000-1500 words a day done as it is and it always feels when I've finished them as though I'm creatively spent and couldn't do more however much time I had. I do often think it would be lovely to write full time, but I think what I mean is that I would like not to work at the day job more than I mean I would like more writing time. I don't think I'd get more of the actual writing done.
Yes, it's a tricky balance, because you also need experience to write about. I think it would be terrible to be in the state I've been in permanently - I really have been cut off from life, and therefore the life-source of writing. My absolute ideal is to have periods like this and periods out in the world - not always the easiest thing to arrange.
Congratulations and well done you for pushing through that slog! I related to absolutely everything in this post - though I have three young children and, until recently, a full-time job. Time is always a problem, but these days it's the head space I definitely lack... Oh well, we plunder on... Good luck with it all xx
Thanks, Carolyn. Yes, it's definitely the headspace rather than the time.
Well, it's the time , too, but it's no good without the headspace...
I often look at other normal mothers with their full fridges and clean homes (feeding and cleaning being defining features of the Italian mother) and wonder what my kids think of the zombie who barely notices them in the afternoon, who forgets to shop, forgets to eat and seems to spend the day in the same place, in winter with a laptop in bed. I think gardening helps. Best, Catherine
Congratulations, Elizabeth - I'm glad to hear you've had the space to go at your novel like this, but even so, you've obviously worked tremendously hard. Certainly time to uncurl and look round at the world...and treat yourself to whatever reward is your favourite thing!
Thanks, Jane - I'm taking your advice and I'm off out for a meal!
Well done, Eliz, on finishing the first stage! I think you describe well the actual physical exhaustion of writing, that even a well person experiences. I would lie on the floor in tears when writing TSoM, and that is no exaggeration.
*Sorry that was me above, typos.
I really don't now how you did it , Nasim
Catherine, you're right about gardening.
Congratulations Elizabeth! That's real work. I do some very unwriterly work and this week has been hectic so I've only manged to write for 40 minutes. But I have thought for about 2 or 3 hours. I have been hanging onto my thoughts until tomorrow. Then I'll write them out as a narrative. Or clean the toilet. Depending. Do you think you can be a writer and also have a clean toilet?
Joseph, the narrative NOT the toilet! Don't let the thought go down the pan after hanging on to them so far...Good luck with the narrative.
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