Ruminations on Writing My First Novel

The following two points are personal introspections that have occurred during the process of switching between writing my first novel and reading other works of literature.  I am not stating absolutes, just expressing ideas.

Rely on the Subconscious – Your subconscious will make thematic and metaphoric connections for you while you write the novel.  Relationships between moments will suddenly appear even though you did not consciously intend to create these relationships.  It’s quite striking and encouraging when these moments occur during the writing process.  Rely on your subconscious to enrich the literary quality of your novel during the initial writing process, then return to the work during revision in order to consciously stitch together intentional thematic elements.  The stitching or binding together of thematic elements requires the writer to make choices, which leads me to my next point about how choice is intertwined with both the writing process and the writer’s ability to write.

Choice, Talent, and the Writer – This thought regarding choice surfaced while reading A Farewell to Arms.  I’ve read that Hemingway eventually collapsed beneath the weight of his own genius, or that he could no longer organize his thoughts.  Of course, what must first be noted is that a good, if not great, writer must be able to clearly express his or her thoughts – but that is merely a necessity to becoming a solid writer.  It is not the essence of talent, because the clear expression of thought can be developed to an extent.  The true core of a talented writer partially resides in his or her ability to make the proper choice in terms of the writing itself, to decide which choice is the absolute best (or at least one of the best) out of a multitude.  For example, in A Farewell to Arms Hemingway writes:

That night in the mess after the spaghetti course, which every one ate very quickly and seriously, lifting the spaghetti on the fork until the loose strands hung clear then lowering it into the mouth, or else using a continuous lift and sucking into the mouth, helping ourselves to wine from the grass-covered gallon flask; it swung in a metal cradle and you pulled the neck of the flask down with the forefinger and the wine, clear red, tannic and lovely, poured out into the glass held with the same hand; after this course, the captain commenced picking on the priest. (7)

Hemingway chose to avoid using periods throughout the entire passage in order to mirror the constant flow of food and drink consumption that occurs during dinner.  The punctuation reflects the narrative moment.  Therein lies talent:  knowing which choice is the best, the most effective.  If you think of great writing in these terms, then Hemingway, at the end of his career, might not have been able to extract the best choice out of a million possibilities.  He could no longer discriminate.  This condition would have been devastating to a writer who had previously known the best choice going on instinct alone.  Losing this ability, this talent to instinctively make the best choice, would tear down the self-image, hence destroying the foundation on which the writer’s personality had been built.  The human being without a conscious sense of self becomes a disoriented animal.  And an animal without instincts is, for all intents and purposes, already dead.

Ben Hill Parham is a third year MFA candidate in fiction.  He plans on finishing his first novel soon, even if it kills him.

A New Year for new habits (good ones)

Writing is an act of pure discipline.  No one demands I transfer thoughts (hopefully significant) to paper or computer screen.  No one leans over my shoulder or paces around the table encouraging me or yelling at me to get it done. 

Due to the metamorphosis of thought into written language, the solitary process of writing requires an enormous amount of discipline.  We’re taking the already difficult attempt at communication, and then striving to construct a complex piece of literature.  As writers, our task lies in this evolution of communication.  Some people might say, “I write for myself.”  While this is a great starting point (and the only one I know of), the completed work should ideally be accessible to some sort of target audience. 

I’ve strayed from discussing my point about discipline, but I think my purpose behind writing should be revealed in order to provide a reason for developing fierce, and I mean fierce, discipline.  I recently finished Stephen King’s memoir about his life as a writer (thanks, Meg Mary, for lending me the book).  King states that to be a true writer, you must take that shit serious - you can’t tinker with it here and think about it there.  In his early years, every day after work he closed the door of the laundry room in his doublewide and wrote for four hours.  Door shut, alone in a room, balancing a typewriter on his lap, he worked while his wife (who has always supported him and is a published author in her own right) watched the children - he existed in a sphere of solitude and self-discipline (I don’t intend to sound sexist, for the women writers the husband can sit his ass in the other room watching the children and leave you to your work as well).  

During my first semester fiction workshop with Professor Furman, we read a book about Emerson on writing, and an Emerson quote stuck with me: "The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent."  To me, Emerson is stating that writing is an all or nothing endeavor, so to be a serious writer you can’t half-ass it.

I can be extremely undisciplined by nature, so striving for rigorous self-control can be a brick wall sometimes, but once I get that first sentence down, the brick wall begins to fade, thoughts connect, and I make sure to ride that momentum to at least 500 words.  Which to me is not near enough (and I don’t write 500 words a day, but when I can, I sure as hell do).  I think King remarked that he writes 2,000 words a day. 

I’m not saying we all have to be as prolific as Stephen King, but what we do is not what “normal” people do, therefore, we must be abnormal in our work ethic.  In order to become writers, I believe we must go beyond other peoples’ capabilities in terms of perseverance and work ethic. 

A few notable authors’ writing habits:

Maya Angelou - 10–12 pages of material a day, which she edits down to three or four pages in the evening.

Graham Greene - counted each word, and would stop for the day at 500, even if he were in the middle of a sentence.

James Joyce – “In the pantheon of great writers of the last century, Joyce looms large. And while more prolific writers set themselves a word or page limit, Joyce prided himself in taking his time with each sentence. A famous story has a friend asking Joyce in the street if he’d had a good day writing. Yes, Joyce replied happily. How much had he written? Three sentences, Joyce told him” (writetodone.com).  (Personally, I’d suggest writing more, we can’t all be James f-ing Joyce, nor should we be.)

Jack London - between 1,000 and 1,500 words each day.

Joyce Carol Oates – “I try to begin work as early as possible, 8:30 a.m., perhaps, and I try to work until past noon or 1 p.m. I try again to write in the evening. Much of my writing is ‘remembering’—I imagine scenes, entire chapters while running or walking—I am very dependent upon this meditative quiet time.”

Currently, Ben Hill Parham is an MFA - Fiction student and GTA of English composition in the FAU creative writing program.  He grew up in LaGrange, GA drinking beer around big fires.