The Jane Austen Project

Maybe I am revising too slowly. I keep reading over the same parts, now into Chapter 15, and it’s glacial. Or maybe there is some other problem. Last week I was so excited about how well my revising was going that I decided to risk exposing myself to other influences. I went to a well-rated Broadway play (Venus in Fur — amazing!) and read a best-selling novel (The Hunger Games — gripping!). There was a two-hour train ride where I simply sank into revising TJAP, ignoring the many distractions of crying babies, French tourists and self-important backpackers, that made me think this was not as hard as I always thought it was. Maybe I have finally figured out what I am doing!

But today I read what I had been doing, and I felt bored by it. In general, the parts that write themselves, that delight me at the time I am writing them, often seem shoddy and facile on closer inspection in the cold light of Later. And so it is now.

Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity. –Gustave Flaubert

So my novel was workshopped. I was horribly nervous the whole day waiting to go the workshop at 8 p.m., like I was waiting for my own execution. But I needn’t have worried. My colleagues and instructor were enthusiastic in their praise; specific and constructive in their criticism. It gave me a much clearer idea of what wasn’t working and why not. More important, fixing it seemed, at that moment, both possible and completely worth the effort. It was an exciting few hours.

And now I have to actually do it. When I sat to revise Chapter 1 — that was when Flaubert and his troupe of dancing bears entered my mind; not only entered but sat down and made themselves at home. What a horribly blunt instrument language is, how inadequate to our supposedly profound ideas! That Flaubert came up with such an unforgettable metaphor for this inadequacy does nothing to diminish the truth of his observation.

Everything is there; I see it now, what needs to be there: sharper, deeper, truthier. But how to get it out?

There are a few things I figured out in the past couple of months that I find myself thinking about and thought might be worth writing down, as I come to the end of one stage of this process and start another.

The most important might also seem the most obvious. Writing a novel takes a lot of time. If you have other commitments, like children and/or an outside job, writing a novel is something you can do in your spare time only if you are willing to ruthlessly refrain from (or at least drastically reduce the frequency of) doing many other things in your spare time, things people often consider normal and desirable, even indispensable: seeing your friends, watching your television shows, exercising, going to the movies or to a museum, keeping your home reasonably clean, volunteering, attending worship services, studying a foreign language, managing your finances, spending a weekend at the beach, surfing the Internet, having people over for dinner, even reading other people’s novels. Such activities become the enemy, for however different they seem, they have one thing in common: they are not writing. When you are doing them you are not writing. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a strange feeling when something that existed only in your mind, or in electronic form, suddenly emerges into the physical realm. Over the weekend I got a request from one of my writing workshop colleagues: she would be away the week I was supposed to deliver my manuscript to the group. Could I deliver it early? As in, Aug 2? I said I could. This meant I had to stop nervously tweaking and take it to the printer’s. I was not sure my venerable laser printer’s cartridge was up to producing 360 pages without warning; besides, I wanted to make my copies double-sided, having realized from attending the group how very bulky paper — each sheet of which seems so thin individually — can get after about 150 or 250 pages. I could not figure out how to do this at home.

I consulted the Internet for recommended copy shops in my neighborhood and set out to Remsen Graphics with my thumb drive. “I have a 360-page document,” I told the man there, who seemed more cheerful than was appropriate to a hot summer Monday morning in the copy shop. “I need five copies. Double-sided. Is that possible?”
“Of course! No problem! Come back in an hour or so.” He took my thumb drive and information about the file. He did not take my name or my money, nor did he write down any of the information I had just imparted. Feeling a bit uneasy about this and hoping the shop would get it right, I went away.

My fears were groundless. When I returned, the copy job was waiting for me, was just as requested, and the price was reasonable. The copies were given to me all in one big box, the thin kind of non-corrugated cardboard like bakeries put cakes in. I had wondered how big the product would turn out to be, had debated which of my reusable shopping bags would be the best size and shape to bring, but as it turned out I chose right. I paid and loaded the box into the bag and lifted the bag onto my shoulder and walked back out into the hot summer morning. The package was sharp-edged, and much heavier than a cake, and it was as I were carrying the weight of the product of my own mind, my own thoughts, home with me.

Rilke said it best: “I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”