Specimens from the Boneyard
To write, or not to write...Stephen King, David Mamet, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman; a humorous comparison and an excerpt from The Irish Singer.
Once you start writing a book—the only thing harder than stoping, is getting started again. When you’re flying it’s hard to imagine being on the ground and when both feet are planted it’s so hard to see how you get up in the air again. Well, life is full of difficult transitions but glad to have discovered, finally, that the zone of writerly creation is my true happy place.
As I’ve mentioned in previous essays, I have one published novel (The Irish Singer) and currently working on the 2nd book of what will be a duology. A long time ago I went to college imagining, among other dreamy but ambitious pursuits, that I might become a writer—and then dropped out a few years later determined to be a musician. In the long run I did both. And if there’s one area of my life now that feels really balanced, it’s the lovely tug-of-war between music and literature that is my daily life at 70.
One does not just sit down and write a decent novel. There’s quite a significant learning curve, but provided you have a good idea to start with, it can be done. As one great contemporary writer says—you either understand the rudiments of English, or you do not—and most likely too late to learn them now. Joseph (The Heart of Darkness) Conrad comes to my mind but that is another story entirely. Beyond a nice grasp of grammar lies the real conundrum—how not to put your reader immediately to sleep, how not to become mired in cliche, and how to find and tell an original story in an original voice.
One needs a teacher and a toolbox, for certain.
Stephen King’s superb little primer, On Writing, came in to my life just when I needed it most. I also turned to David Mamet(Glengarry Glen Ross), Margaret Atwood (The Handmaids Tale), and Neil Gaiman (The Sandman) through the Masterclass online courses. It’s interesting, and amusing, to compare these distinquished writers as teachers. I’ll put Stephen in one category and the others in a 2nd; he’s great—they suck. I got more out of one page of On Writing than from hours of the Masterclasses.
Mamet preaches the value of writing with pencil on a legal pad. Hey, it’s a humble profession and full of very hard work—I get that and thanks! Margaret says you must learn to enjoy writing badly. The most important thing being to show up and commit day after day—so an iron clad work ethic is essential, and hey I see that, awesome! Neil says you must give your characters funny hats, to make it easy for the reader to keep them all straight—brilliant and very serviceable idea, thank you!
So, I literally got one useful takeaway from each, but from Stephen King I learned how to write a novel.
It’s more than the difference in medium; true, Mr. King had a whole book to discuss the matter and the aforementioned three only had a few hours to tell you how to do it. I believe they could easily have shared a complete look at their process in the time allotted, and why not, isn’t that exactly what they were paid a handsome fee to do? What seemed obvious to me is that Stephen King has a powerful fascination, a burning interest, as strong as any inspired creative notion he has ever had—to pull back the curtain and actually teach and show a novice how to write well, and the other three—not so much. Stephen did start out as a teacher of English, way back when, and he is still a very good teacher today, the best.
On Writing offers up not just a few tantalizing tidbits, but everything; all the nuts and bolts that go into a writer’s toolbox, all the secrets, all the pitfalls, and does it with a mighty sense of humor absent a tone of self-importance. What I felt from the Masterclass sojourn, more than anything, was the precense of powerful defensive egos, and, just how buried in mystique a famous writer can be. None of them much wanted to be there, and damn sure weren’t going to let you into the nuts and bolts of their operation(why give you, a nobody, the real keys to the kingdom?), so they were cagey and really kind of boring—geez, this already way insecure writer only felt worse after his “masterclass” experience.
Well, all three of them, David, Margaret, and Neil; are great writers with an impressive body of work and maybe they just don’t have a flair for boiling it down so a dummy like me can catch on. Ha—Mr. King does though and thank the stars!
A few key directives from On Writing are in order now I believe: clear seeing leads to good writing, write what you see, omit unnecessary words, avoid adverbs whenever possible, plot is untrustworthy and should be kept under house arrest, plot and the spontaneity of real creation are not compatible, don’t take yourself too seriously love your people and go for long walks(these last three are in the subtext). He certainly has nothing to prove at this point but keeps on proving it nonetheless. King’s introduction, on Substack, to an excerpt from his new book, Gabriel’s War—tells a short and very humorous history of the English language and is the best new piece of writing I’ve come across on Substack or anywhere else in the past few weeks.
I started my Saturday plugging in ideas and inspirations to the new book, received last night while sitting on the back deck and sipping bourbon. So, I guess I’ll eat my lunch now and get back to it. Damn novel’s not going to write itself.
Here is an excerpt from The Irish Singer Vol 2 (the real title coming soon!):
Billy is getting used to determined hunters sleeping on his trail. Danger had been following since he left Silver City and struck out into the desert five years before. He was anonymous then, just another drifting orphan saddle tramp. That heart-quickening moment of fear had long since become an old friend, still—this was different, and truth be told, not altogether unpleasant. In singular fashion he had become the most wanted, and to his way of thinking—the most important man in New Mexico. These high-born thoughts percolating as he eases along a darkened alley, tremulous sensations running through his body like a crazy kind of ticklish wildfire. Well, its all just exactly as it ought to be and worries be damned. The stealth and skullduggery and divinations just made the game more compelling, the rewards more bejeweled.
Since his escape from the Greathouse boondoggle, the Kid had been working his way back North, but in a circuitous roundabout, sombrero pulled low—blending in with his people and moving across the landscape often at night, always in shadows—with an animate grace. Indeed, shadows and silence are his truest companions. A santos born of the earth, a trickster, a thief, a raconteur, a jester, a ravisher, a gambler, a gentleman, a singer, a prince, a demon.
Though weaving mysterious circles and figure eights Billy Kid had drifted inexorably for Fort Sumner and Paulitta. She is close now. The night is below freezing and pitch dark but the warmth in his blood leading the way like a blazing torch. The shape of her lovely hands and feet, the beguiling curve of her breasts and the way the hip bones protrude as her body ungulates under his—these dusky images flooding his mind with heat and desire and joy—and the love in her eyes the sweetest prize of all. An empty lot yet to cross holds back the tide as he peers ahead. On the far side to his right a small adobe with lighted window beckons. He listens carefully to a number of faint sounds before making the last critical ambit. He has excellent eyes and has trained them relentlessly, along with all his other skills, to ensure being one step ahead, at the very least. The still night under low clouds gives the smallest noise a reverberence joyful to his ear. There is an old man snoring on the other side of the thin wall his back is against, a four legged critter moving lightly in the snow, the low hoot of an owl, a muted conversation in Spanish somewhere out in the dark to his left. The outline of a compound in that same direction, its encircling wall vaguely lambent and then prairie in various shades and shapes of umbra extending beyond the vacant parcel in his front—and the little Casita, attached by a low wall to a cluster of buildings.
Paulitta’s home is being watched, or at least that is the strong suspicion, but through a network of local conspirators that included Deluvina from the household staff—a safe rendezvous at the edge of town had been carefully planned—and now only a snowy field separates the lovers.
One last perusal of sight and sound but the final go ahead is a preternatural determination. All is recomendatory, as Pip would say and he steps out from the wall. First, last, or only step—its always the next one that matters most—and this one feels safe, consecrated. Everything has brought me to this moment and forward I go, he thinks, moving across the open and towards the orange glow a smile on his face big as the life he’d created from nothing.