Guest blogger— Carole Burns

Guest blogger Carole Burns is the host of "Off the Page" on washingtonpost.com and has written about her experience: Off the Page: Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings and Everything in Between. She has written for The New York Times and The Washington Post. A lecturer in creative writing at the University of Winchester in England, she is writing her first novel.

Novel Writing 101

I broke the sound barrier on my novel again today.  This is how it feels when I come back to it after too long a time: there’s a wall between me and it, invisible, as the strongest walls often are, but impossible to break through, or so it seems.  What if I can’t this time? 

That is always the biggest fear.

Unlike Chuck Yeager, I can’t run at it as fast as possible.  I need to walk around it a while.  Give it time.  I may have to sneak up to it, find a side route in. 
   
And so here is how the first day of my “Summer log 2007” reads:
Monday June 18 – Looked at Janus photos; scribbled;
Page count at start: 114
At end: 118
Work on Russ in Chicago chapter
Read History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Checked on Off the Page blurbs

I named this file before I knew I’d be writing a summer blog, for Wendi. But here are all the things I want to write about: my novel, writing, reading, my book coming out, what I hope to accomplish this summer, why I write.

I didn’t read all of Nicole Krauss’s novel on June 18. With a book such as The History of Love, I don’t mind.  I want to savor it. On the train into London this week, I caught myself giggling as I read a chapter in the voice of the cantankerous, wise, regretful Leo Gursky, and then crying.  (My boyfriend said he should have been with me so he could point and say, “She’s American,” which in England explains pretty much everything about me.)

Before breaking the sound barrier, though, I was ready to kill Nicole Krauss.  She knows how to write, I thought.  I don’t.

I keep at it.

Which brings me to the book I have finished.  In 2003, I began an online show at washingtonpost.com called “Off the Page,” in which I interview writers, usually about their latest book. 

And now, I’ve made it into a book, coming out in December with Norton, called Off the Page: Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings and Everything in Between. And they do.  Martin Amis talked about sex in fiction; A.S. Byatt said she begins her novels with color. 
It’s not made up of transcripts – you can find interview transcripts online – but of chapters about character, place, the writing life, with quotes from the many authors. 

Lots of D.C. writers, by the way: Mary Kay Zuravleff, Marie Arana, Doreen Baingana, Carolyn Parkhurst.

(From the Department of Shameless Self-Promotion: A peek at Off the Page on amazon --yes, you can pre-order! Though don’t forget independents such as Politics & Prose and Kramer’s.  You can also tap into new “Off the Page” interviews when they begin again in December.)

More to the point: One cannot edit a book about writing, read quotes over and over again about style, voice, revising, and not learn a few things.  Right?
So as I struggle with my novel, words from Off the Page come to mind.

Michael Cunningham:
I've found that when I look back at what I've written six months later, I can't distinguish the parts I wrote on the good days from the parts I wrote on the bad. I've come to believe that the inspiration is always there, like an electrical current, and what varies is our access to it. And I've found that the best way to cope with that is with diligence, is with a kind of daily determination.

Richard Bausch:
When you feel global doubt about your talent, that is your talent. People who have no talent don't have any doubt. And it's figuring that out and learning how to put all that stuff behind you and just do the work.

And Russell Banks:
The short motto I've kept over my desk for forty years now is just this: Remember Death.

These are in my head, too.

I’m in a funny stage on my novel: I have a beginning, an ending, but not everything in between. So I’m trying to create a continuum—revising what I have and adding them in order to the “Novel 50+” file.  It feels like I’m galloping.

By Thursday I’m at page 160, and I hit a wall again.  I’ve hit this same wall so many times in the last few years—Do I have the right order? 

Damn. I stay calm.  I read. (History of Love to the rescue).  I look at chapters that come later—can this scene happen now?  The next day, I print out page one of the first fifteen chapters and pin them to the wall of my studio.  Coincidentally, or not, a chapter I might put later needs to be pinned onto the adjoining wall—out of room. A sign? How long will I torture myself with this? 

A long time, I think . Another year at least.  I won’t know what’s right until it’s done. 
My goal for the summer: To feel, when the summer ends, that I’ve worked as hard on my novel as I possibly can.

Comments

[Cheryl Snell]

I like that Remember Death quote. Kinda slams it all into perspective.

Continued luck with your novel. The second one won't be a bit easier, as I'm just now finding out.{sigh}