Reach a Milestone
In A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway mentions one of his sure-fire writing tricks: always to stop writing for the day before he'd emptied his brain, so that when he sat down again the next day he'd always have something in there to start with. It's the most practical piece of writing advice I've ever heard or read, and the proof of its utility is how it's made the rounds -- I think even Hemingway had gotten it from someone else.
Last week, I reached a small milestone in The Amateurs: roughly, the setting of the scene and the introduction of the most important players as well as the problems that will be addressed in the plot. Not that I've been writing nothing but exposition for 25,000 words; plenty of things have happened -- but the course of the story, which has been moving in a straight line, will now take a sharp bend and go over some rapids.
Naturally, I finished the Straight Line part last Thursday and then took a nice long Labor Day break to "brainstorm" about the Bendy Rapids part. I stupidly thought I could do this somehow subliminally, in the downtime between the championship CNN-watching and experimental martini-drinking I also had planned. Needless to say, I started today's writing task with almost no clue where I was going with it, thereby proving, if it needed proving, that Hemingway was a lot smarter than I am.
Word Count: 25,299 (+534)
Last week, I reached a small milestone in The Amateurs: roughly, the setting of the scene and the introduction of the most important players as well as the problems that will be addressed in the plot. Not that I've been writing nothing but exposition for 25,000 words; plenty of things have happened -- but the course of the story, which has been moving in a straight line, will now take a sharp bend and go over some rapids.
Naturally, I finished the Straight Line part last Thursday and then took a nice long Labor Day break to "brainstorm" about the Bendy Rapids part. I stupidly thought I could do this somehow subliminally, in the downtime between the championship CNN-watching and experimental martini-drinking I also had planned. Needless to say, I started today's writing task with almost no clue where I was going with it, thereby proving, if it needed proving, that Hemingway was a lot smarter than I am.
Word Count: 25,299 (+534)
posted by kathy monahan at 11:02 AM
2 Comments:
An article from "Books & The Arts" section of The Nation Magazine double issue dated August 29/September 5, 2005 titled The Unexamined Life by Lee Siegel says, "To a large degree, writing a book has become just another form of producing and selling another project of entrepreneurial or egotistical American self. That makes most books being published social, not cultural, events." So, while looking for the sharp right turn or rapids in your story hold the cultural events in mind. I strongly recommend the movie with Ralph Fiennes, The Constant Gardner, for the excellent cultural story that it is (adapted from the book by John Le Carre).
As always, I love your work!
I agree that it's a rare book that tells us more about ourselves than it does about the author, but I don't know that social and cultural are mutually exclusive designations. We all live in our time, after all, and even the most self-indulgent prattle becomes an artifact if it lasts long enough.
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