I have been writing a novel for the past several years, at a snail’s pace. Early in the morning, before the day starts, my husband Ian and I sit down and write for about a half hour. (Or sometimes only 20 minutes. “Something is better than nothing,” is my guiding motto.) Ian is working on his own novel, so we write together at the same table, but on our separate projects.
Lately, I have been feeling really stuck with my plot. I’ve been spending my writing time each morning not actually writing at all. Instead, I stare in confusion at the computer screen, pulling at my hair and gnawing on the collar of my shirt in frustration, like a maniac.
I have a wonderful writer friend, Kate, and we keep touch with old-fashioned letter writing. In a recent letter, Kate suggested that I use notecards to boil down different scenes so that I could make drastic changes. So I tried, and I have spent a lot of time spreading my notes and notecards and scribbled insane timelines all over the floor, to no avail. I am still really struggling with making sense of it all.
Specifically, I have way too many subplots, and possibly too many characters who are either ghosts or gods in disguise. I also have a really intense climactic scene in the middle of the novel that should probably be near the end, where the real climax is. But logistically I can’t seem to move it there. It’s stuck in the middle, and by comparison, my actual climax is just a thin echo.
Trying harder isn’t helping, I can’t force it.
I wonder if somehow I need to “let go.”
“Writing my novel with red teapot” gouache on envelope
There are clear parallels between my writing and my painting practices. I have experienced in the studio that there is a point, if all is going well, when I need to let go of my original vision of the painting, and allow the painting itself to become an active participant in the creative process. The painting will “speak” to me, make clear how it wants to be. From then on, the dynamic changes. It is no longer a situation where the “active artist” is exerting her will upon her “passive creation.” It has instead become a mutual relationship.
A certain amount of struggling and “sweat and blood” is probably inevitable in all creative pursuits. But there’s a time for that, and there is also a time to let go, to step back, and not try to control everything. This letting go requires a tremendous amount of faith. Success is never guaranteed.
But I truly do believe that the work itself has its own spirit, and that it wants to come into being. If you let it participate in the process, magical surprises will happen!
“Me typing my novel, with flowers” gouache on envelope