"A novel is like a cathedral, and you really can’t carry in your imagination the form a cathedral is to take."
"I have to create for the novel a tremendous amount of raw material, and then cut the novel out of it. I write novels the way films are made. I literally cut with a pair of scissors. In Fools of Fortune there is a character who disappears for years; I know where he went, and I’ve written all that and abandoned it. But I couldn’t have written the novel without knowing what he’d done, and where he was. But that’s an extreme example. A better one is knowing, say, what someone has done during a week it doesn’t tell you about in the book ... I write incidents and scenes over and over again until eventually they are completely clear to me. For a reader it would be boring to know all those details, so the details in the end just wither away, after you’ve picked out the ones that you want . . . but you know how he’s perambulated round a particular room, and what she does after he goes, or whatever it happens to be. And, of course, the bits that aren’t there are just as important as the bits that are there, because they’re deliberately left out. You keep back from the reader the fact that she went down to the kitchen and boiled an egg. You don’t want to say so because it is somehow important that that is left for the reader to imagine."
William Trevor, from an interview with The Paris Review.
I started my new book today. Officially, that is. I had about 10,000 words of rough drafts and pages of notes, but today was the Beginning, where I actually typed out 'Chapter One' and sat looking at it for five minutes. I have a series of postcards in my head, images that I know will appear, and not much else. But that seems to be how I always begin things. I'm kind of a mess. And I am such a rookie at this, still, and grateful to have access to the words of other writers to reassure me that other people work in the same way that I do. I always write far more than I need to, and end up cutting tens of thousands of words. I always create these huge, uneven, untidy things, like a toddler set free with the fingerpaints, and have to spend most of my time cleaning them up.
It is always an exciting time, the first few weeks with a new idea. I love the process just before beginning - reading, researching, taking notes, daydreaming. I also love the first few chapters, while everything is still new and promising and completely open. It's exhilarating. Of course, I know that in a month's time or so I'll be embroiled in the Great Swampy Middle and feeling like pulling out my toenails one by one would be less painful than writing another word, but for now I'm in that first flush of romance and can't imagine feeling anything but affection for it. Having said that, it has been strange talking and writing about The Cry of the Go-Away Bird so much over the past month - even though it is brand-new in the world, I finished working on it over a year ago, and so it feels like talking about an ex-boyfriend (we had an intense relationship once, but then we broke up and I moved on ... or something like that). And the same with the last book, too. I guess I'm a serial monogamist.
P.S. Christchurch continues to stand strong and recover after last week's earthquake. For ways in which you can help, go here.
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