"These are novels of potentiality. Quantum narratives. Their power isn’t in their final acts, but in the profusion of superpositions before them, the could-bes, what-ifs and never-knows. Until that final chapter, each of those is as real and true as all the others, jostling realities all dreamed up by the crime, none trapped in vulgar facticity. That’s why the most important sentence in a murder mystery isn’t the one starting ‘The murderer is…’ – which no matter how necessary and fabulously executed is an act of unspeakable narrative winnowing - but is the snarled expostulation halfway through: ‘Everyone’s a suspect.’"
I love it.
China Miéville’s new novel The City & The City was out yesterday. It's described by FantasticFiction.co.uk: "with shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & The City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights." Blimey.
This is what I need to write well: momentum. To stay in a story, to keep with a character, to give a little of myself each day so the next day it's habit, it's expected, it's easier to give. Trying to write when I haven't written in days, or even weeks, is awkward at best, agony on the bad days. Trying to add to or edit a story when I've been away from that world for a little while is like jumping into a dance in the middle, forgetting the step before, and unsure of the steps that come next.
Jamie Grove has coined the term "Writing Chain" to describe the act of writing every day and getting better for the practice. He says,
"...I looked deeper and noticed there was a marked improvement in the work itself just after I took up the habit of recording daily word counts for each session. From that point forward, I could see myself pushing harder. I made side comments on certain days when the word count was 'low'. I smacked myself around for a half effort and often went back to write more. I marveled at sessions comprising thousands of words (some of which were actually in the right order). I also noticed that the words appeared to come so much easier.
Bit by bit, I'd forged a chain of writing sessions. I learned that if one wanted to be a writer they had to write just a little more each and every day. I just needed to forge my chain.
In other words, I got better as long as I was working consistently."
And he's created an iPhone application to support the process. WriteChain records your writing sessions day by day and tells you how many "links" you've created, and when you've broken the chain. You can set it to allow skipped days if you know that's what you require, and set daily wordcount goals. It lets you create a situation best for you personally, but the reality is always there: you have to write, so write already.
I usually use Twitter to record my word count and alert me when I'm not writing, but I like this, too. It's aesthetic and fun and unforgiving. You can get it from itunes here, and it's currently free.
If you don't have an iPhone or a Twitter account or any other way to externally map your progress (for a while I put a check-mark on a paper calendar, proving low-tech is just as adequate as anything,) I encourage you to do so. I have a friend who emails me with her daily progress, and vice versa, and that's wonderful: knowing I'm not alone in the daily efforts, having to face up to a lack of a progress report, and knowing I'm not the only one who has the occasional bleak day, and still gets back into it, better late than never. Because every day I write is part of a chain, even if it's just beginning.
Browsing the other day brought me to 99 Ways to Tell a Story by Matt Madden. It's a graphic novel that - you guessed it - tells the same story in 99 ways, using different graphic styles, different storytelling techniques, alternate perspectives, maps, timelines, whatever, so long as it's something else every iteration.
A few examples: the original page, a method using inventory of the scene, and the story being told by other characters in a bar.
In writing a novel, there are always many ways to tell the story. When I first began to write I tried to find the perfect word for every moment. I regularly got stuck and I have a lot of stories that were started and never finished, abandoned to the indecision of which perfect word came next.
As I learned the joys of editing my work I found that there is no perfect word. There are always others that might be used, and in the same way there are whole other scenes that can be used to get from the beginning of the book to the end. The novel I'm editing right now is an example of this. My first draft included flashbacks and scenes from another character who is now, in the third draft, completely secondary. He is still an important part of everything, but the greater distance from him allows me to stay closer to the protagonist. This means there are suddenly whole scenes vanished from the manuscript, and new scenes have appeared. The same scene is viewed from a different perspective, giving an entirely different result. It allows for more mystery in the spaces between what he and she would tell, and as every filmmaker knows, sometimes the reaction shots are just as important as the action shots.
Try to imagine the entire Lord of the Rings epic as seen from one Orc. Or, Pride and Prejudice told through letters written between Caroline Bingley and her friend in Paris (I wouldn't be shocked if the latter turns up in a bookstore near you one day - the story has already been re-told through Mr. Darcy's eyes several times.) Madden's graphic novel demonstrates this multiple-perspective and in some cases multiple-reality type storytelling brilliantly. I'm tempted to buy the book to use it as a writing prompt: take a short story I have in mind and see how many different ways I can break it apart and put it back together, paint it, illuminate it, and set it free. Even a small slice of a novel will give up more of its secrets when examined in such a way.
Madden's book was inspired by a work of the same name by the French writer Raymond Queneau who used the method with text rather than drawing. I haven't snagged myself a copy yet, though.
I was in a bookstore this week. A clerk put a few volumes on the New Books shelf, where I was eagerly skimming titles and synopses for new treats. Another clerk came and became confused about which book was going out, then said, "Oh well, they're all the same anyway."
I stood there as they walked away, feeling a lump of something tragic in my chest. And all those books sat there on the New Books shelf, looking mournful and pathetic and identical, despite having just come out of their boxes, bright and new and hopeful.
Yes, I'm one of those oversensitive freaks that sees inanimate objects as slightly sentient. I think it's really that I see all the relationships and ideas attached to those objects: a new book, a new possibility, the chance for an adventure in a brand new world. The physical book is the tip of the iceberg of the story inside, and of the author's ideas and hopes for publication.
I've worked in bookstores and I know that some books don't sell and are either sent back to the publisher or get stripped of their covers and discarded. The first time I witnessed the latter was at my very first job, assigned the task of ripping the covers from half a dozen sci fi paperbacks that had been gathering dust on the shelves for months. It was difficult for me. Ripping off the covers was like tearing the wings off butterflies. The result was a small stack of brutalized light brown cuboids, with nothing covering the title pages or the first few enthusiastic reviews. "A real page-turner!" Or not.
But more vivid than this is the memory of taking the half dozen books downstairs, where other stripped books were waiting to be thrown way. It had been a while since they'd cleared them out. The basement was full of bags, stacks, pyramids of these uniform naked volumes. Pages and pages, stories and stories, completely ineffectual, unloved and untold. Ozymandias, eat your heart out.
Here's the practical aspect of it: stripping books of their covers and throwing them away (or better, recycling the pages) assures the publisher that the book is not being sold, so the bookseller gets some of the purchase price back, but the full book is not mailed again, saving everyone money, and hey, saving the environment by cutting down on fuel, etc. It's a good idea.
In the meantime many books take up space and overstay their welcome, and I shouldn't be too hard on the bookstore clerks who start to see them as dissimilar. If it isn't the next bestseller many books are similar, trying to fit into the niches of the bestsellers. And sure, many books are just bad. Working in bookstores and libraries introduced me to plenty of those that I wished could disappear and leave room for better things.
But I hope I always see the New Books shelf as potential favourites and the realization of authors' dreams rather than uniform products of the publishing world. I like associating these colourful cuboids with the effort and possibility that went into them and could come out of them. I know that some of these books will change lives, or at the very least, make a moment of a life better, more interesting, and give that moment depth. I want to believe there's a place on a shelf for my stories, that they'll have an effect, throw a spark into the darkness, and prove they're worth their space.
China Miéville’s new novel The City & The City was out yesterday. It's described by FantasticFiction.co.uk: "with shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & The City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights." Blimey.
