To Strive, To Seek, To Find, and Not to Yield
The Literary Lab had a post recently about making each word, each sentence count in a novel. There was some argument in the comments about whether this was possible, or even desirable.
One interesting accusation was that novelists who try to do this are secretly short story writers who haven't figured out the difference between 1000 and 100,000 thousand words.
It may be even worse. It may be that novelists who try to do this are secretly poets.
At times, especially if I've been off my meds for several days, I think of my novel as a ballad or epic of the ancient sort, in heroic rhyme. And why not? Much of the source material, the original epics upon which modern fantasies base their structure, were book-length poems.
When I become stuck in my prose, and everything I type is ugly and repetitive, when all beauty and simplicity escapes me, I fall back on poetry.
Seriously.
I write a scene as a poem. Sometimes even with aliteration and rhyme, though often just with unrhymed metered verse. I write it one line, one word, at a time. I let the rhyme and meter decompose through layers of editing. I rearrange and deconstruct and reconstruct until the bedrock poem is there only as a skeletal structure, disguised by less ornate prose. Consistantly, beta readers rave over these as my best passages--and want to know why the rest of the prose is so unispired and infantile by comparison.
Well, now you know why.
Should I do this with every single scene? I am not sure. There's the danger that taken to extremes, stacking too many such scenes, purple prose could accumulate to toxic levels. But more to the point, I just finished a scene like this and found that, after four hours, I had written... 400 words.
Still, if it takes an hour to write a 100 decent words, isn't that better than spewing 1000 words an hour if those words are worthless and ugly? If they must be re-written again and again regardless?
What about those scenes which errupt like volcanoes, far too fast for poetry, but hot with plotty goodness and juicy character tension?
Ah, at least, though, hot and fast or cool and slow, I remember at such times why I love writing.
Comments
I'm one of the believers that sustained brilliance is not possible. There are passages in my writing that are brilliant. I can't tell you the how/why/what of the brilliance. Those passages just stand out for some reason. I could also not tell you the emotions, the lighting, the music, how many glasses of wine I might have had when I wrote those passages. I just did.
But . . . if your brilliance is achieved by writing 400 words in an hour . . . go for it. If it works for you . . . go for it.
We (writers) follow the same dream, we just take different paths to get there.
You know where I fall on the question of each sentence in a work being important, and that I think it makes no difference whether the work in question is a short story or a novel. Writers live or die by our prose, because it's all we've got. No, not every line we write will be inspired and gorgeous, but if *we* know that we can do better, then we should.
I have a growing suspicion that there is no such thing as a "perfect" novel, because I don't believe the form allows perfection. Still, we ought to try. Writing is a heroic act, and we should all strive for that heroism.
This is a great post, and I love to know this about you! I studied poetry mostly in college, and can never seem to get away from it. It's certainly the medium of language at its finest.
I'm considering something similar. In my opinion, it's often better to do the good writing slower. I once wrote 4000 words a day for about two weeks. And what I discovered afterward is that they weren't particularly good. Now, I'm doing 1000 or so on a good day. But, they're BETTER words. I think, in the long run, the slower way is better.
I'm also a believer that every line should be examined. It's not about making everything purple. I'm not into the purple prose, not even for a line. The story form is made up of pieces that complement each other. They shouldn't all be suffocating each other. If examining every line ends up with toxic purple writing, I'd say that was a bad examination, not an overly thorough one. It's like cooking a meal. If you pay attention to every course, you'll end up with a meal that's balanced and varying, rather than six courses of chocolate mousse.
I like Scott's use of the term Hero.
I gave you an award, by the way:
http://fromelysium.blogspot.com/2009/05/one-lovely-blog-award.html
You should read "Because I am Furniture" by Thalia Chaltas. The whole book is written in verse, which sounded kind of weird to me. But the book is amazing. I was pulled in immediately to the story and couldn't stop reading.
On the other hand, it's exhausting to read pages and pages of it, much less write it. So, I'm thinking that this is perhaps a case where less is more...??