I didn’t know who the killer was when I started the book. I didn’t even have a clue who the various suspects would be. All I really knew was how I wanted the book to open. That scene was vivid in my mind, and during the writing of it I got enough of an idea who the lead was to write the second chapter. After that point I largely plotted the book as I went along. For all of that, I never did have to rewrite the first two chapters. They were sufficiently well realized to hold up fine despite the fact that I wrote them without knowing what would follow them.
By and large, though, first chapters are more apt to need rewriting than subsequent chapters, at least in my own novels. When this proves to be the case, I have the choice of rewriting my opening immediately or pushing on with the book and redoing the opening after I’ve completed the first draft.
Again, the decision is individual and arbitrary. Do you get it written first or do you first get it right? I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m more comfortable with a book if I rewrite this sort of thing as I go along; otherwise my concentration on Chapter Fifteen, say, is diffused by the nagging awareness that Chapters One through Three have to make another trip through the typewriter. We’ll discuss this general dilemma again in a chapter on revision, but it seems worth a brief mention here because beginning sections are so often apt to be out of synch with the rest of the book.
Knowing that an opening may very well need to be rewritten can make you sloppy. For this reason, I always proceed on the premise that what I’m writing is what will one day be set in type, word for imperishable word.
But that’s just my approach. For another writer, that sort of sloppiness might be worth encouraging; he might be infinitely less inhibited typing an unabashedly rudimentary first draft on yellow second sheets than if he felt his words were being carved on stone tablets.
The important thing, as I’ve said before, is neither to get it written nor to get it right. The important thing is to do what works.
Chapter 9
Getting It Written
How to harness self-discipline for the long haul of novel-writing: Take it a day at a time
Writing a novel is hard work.
Now writing anything well is work, whether it’s an epic trilogy or the last line of a limerick for a deodorant contest. But when it comes to the novel you have to work long and hard even to produce a bad one. This may help explain why there are so many more bad amateur poets around than there are bad amateur novelists. Writing a good poem may be as difficult as writing a good novel. It may even be harder. But any clown with a sharp pencil can write out a dozen lines of verse and call them a poem. Not just any clown can fill 200 pages with prose and call it a novel. Only the more determined clowns can get the job done.
“I could never be a writer,” countless acquaintances have told me, “because I just don’t have the necessary self-discipline. I’d keep finding other things to do. I’d never get around to working on the book. I wouldn’t get anything accomplished.”
Let’s not kid ourselves. It does take self-discipline. On the dullest day imaginable, I can always find something to do besides writing. I have innumerable choices. I can read, I can watch television, I can pick up the phone and call somebody, I can hit the refrigerator — or I can decide instead to sit at a typewriter, pick words out of the air, put them in order, and spread them on the page.
Unless I can consistently choose to work, I’m not going to get books written.
Self-discipline takes a variety of forms. In this regard we might consider two of the most prolific novelists the world has ever known, Georges Simenon and John Creasey. Each wrote several hundred books, and each achieved considerable prominence in the field of crime fiction.
John Creasey wrote every day. He worked seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, producing approximately 2,000 words each morning before breakfast. His routine never varied; at home or abroad, tired or bursting with energy, he got up, brushed his teeth, and started writing. He admitted his behavior was compulsive, explaining that he couldn’t relax and enjoy the rest of the day unless he’d first tended to his writing chores. If you write 2,000 words a day, you are going to turn out close to a dozen books a year, and Creasey did just that for most of his lifetime.
Georges Simenon’s approach was altogether different. You may have seen a television documentary on his writing habits; it has had considerable exposure over the educational channels. Typically, he would pack a bag and a typewriter and travel to one European city or another where he would check into a hotel. There he would work in the most intense manner imaginable, immersing himself utterly in his work, avoiding human contact for the duration, and producing a finished manuscript in ten or twelve days. The book finished, he would return home and resume his everyday life, letting the plot gradually develop for his next novel, and ultimately heading off to another city and repeating the process once again.
My own writing methods have changed constantly over the past twenty years, forever shaping themselves to fit my state of mind, time of life, and various special circumstances. In the early years, the Simenon approach had a tremendous appeal for me. I can still see something to be said for the idea of completing a book in as short a total span of time as possible; that way one remains very much in the book during the term of its production, and one’s involvement can be very intense indeed.
I have on occasion written books in as little as three days; I’ve written a couple that took only seven or eight days that are probably as good as anything I’ve done. I can’t argue that I made a mistake writing those books as rapidly as I did. Nor am I at all inclined to attempt to do that sort of thing now.
Nowadays I try to write not twenty or thirty pages in a day’s time but five or six or seven. Age may very well be a factor, but I rather doubt that it’s the only one, or even the major one. It’s at least as significant, I think, that I’ve become a more careful writer and a more flexible one. When I was a brash and cocky young scribbler I was blessed with a very useful sort of tunnel vision; i.e., I could just see one way to do something in a book, and so I lowered my head and charged right in and did it. Now my vision has widened. I’m apt to be more aware of possibilities, of the multiplicity of options available to me as a writer. I’m able to see any number of ways to structure a scene. A slower pace helps me choose among them, selecting the one I’m most comfortable with.
Years ago I was apt to work late at night, and that’s something else I don’t do any more. I’m sure part of the appeal of the midnight oil lay in the image that went with it — the lonely toiler, fortifying himself with endless cups of coffee, smoking endless cigarettes, and fighting the good fight while the rest of the world slept. There was also a practical element involved; with the rest of my family (like the rest of the world) asleep, I could work without interruption, a consummation devoutly to be wished if ever there was one.
Then too, at that stage in my life I appeared to be more of a night person. I felt the wise thing to do with mornings was to sleep through them, and that a sunrise was a marvelous thing to look at immediately before going to bed.