The Goal: Write, Revise, Finish, Repeat
I start every story in a notebook. I love to handwrite because it alleviates the anxiety I feel when I start to type a sentence on a computer screen and immediately judge it, pick it apart, think of the ways in which it's the kind of sentence a 'real writer' would never write.
This morning, I read a fascinating article in the NYTimes on Spalding Gray’s journals, and though unrelated to the content of the piece, the image of his notebook made me realize that I wanted to start photographing pages of my notebooks as a form of documentation, of recognizing this work as important but also starting to document what the heck I'm trying to do here.
Because, after all, the problem with notebooks when you’re like me and have trouble finishing projects is that it’s easy to just keep spinning out yarn after yarn and never weaving an idea into a complete work--to use a tired cliche. For years and years and years, I produce first draft after first draft after first draft instead of taking these sentences from notebook to computer, where they can be refined and reworked and revised.
So: my current goal is to finish something. The story I'm working on is called "The Russian." I'm a few thousand words in. I'd like to have a complete draft by November 1st.
This blog is going to be my way of holding myself accountable. Who knows--maybe just giving myself a deadline will make it happen. And the handwritten pages are reminders of the hours I am putting into the craft. They’re also something tangible, something to see and hold onto, because when it’s all said and done, isn’t there something beautiful about a notebook?
And by the way, instead of taking back what I said in the first paragraph because it's something I think all the time, let me just say, isn’t there something silly about this notion of writing like a ‘real writer?’ I don’t know why I insist on thinking such self-deprecating, useless thoughts. But when I come to my senses, I do realize that a real writer is simply a person who writes. I am, if nothing else, someone who can’t help but do that, no matter how much I struggle to produce fiction that I feel proud of, no matter how many times I reread paragraphs I wrote yesterday and decide they profoundly suck, no matter how many times I read a sentence or a paragraph that someone else has written and think, well, I should just give up now.
Nonsense. No more dwelling on all I have not done, all I have not written, all I have not published. This blog will be about recognizing what I am doing. This is about getting on with it. It's about not listening to the pesky naysayers inside my head. In short, it's about writing.
Hemingway said he started by trying to find “one true sentence.” That's all any of us can do, I think.
