Writing

Those of you who read this blog will probably have realised by now that I really like writing. It's pure pleasure for me. What you may not know is that what I like writing is stories. To date I haven't written that many, just about enough to fill a book, but I've written enough to know this: writing is hard. It takes time, and it takes a lot of effort.

Starting a story is easy. You don't need much: usually just a character, or a situation, or how the sky looks on a certain day. The story usually comes out from there. And once the story starts, it seems to know itself, know where it's going. Stories seem to progress quite naturally to their end: in my experience, if this isn't the case, then the story will probably amount to no good. 

Some people complain about inspiration: I can't write because I'm not inspired. All I can say is sit down and write a few sentences. It might seem like nothing will come out of it at the beginning, but I find it addictive. After a few sentences I'll probably want to write a few more, and then I'll have some sort of characters, some sort of plot starting. Go on from there. Try not to think too much about the writing itself. How I write matters, words matter, the way sentences are built matters, but the story is the main thing. I can destroy the best story by writing badly, it's true, but I can never write well without a good story.

OK, let's say I have a good story going by now. It has a plot, it has characters, and when I go back to read what I've written I don't cringe too much. Now it's time to get to the closing. Ideally, I will know how the story ends, because usually stories can only end one way (if they are to be good stories). This doesn't mean that they can't have an open ending, or a hopeful ending, or a happy ending, it just means that there's a right moment when a story is done. Writing beyond that moment is useless: the story is already finished, and any more writing will be stale. But I'll say this: getting to the end isn't easy. There's a bridge to cross, and it's not easy to find. I find it very difficult to explain, but there has to be something in a story which signals the ending, and I don't always find it. I have a few started stories that I reread every so often, trying to find the path, the way that leads to their inevitable finish, but I can't. They have been rewritten a few times, they change slightly, I add a character here, or eliminate a character there. Sometimes I feel I've almost got it. And then it's gone. These stories escape me, and they're always on my mind at some level. Yes, finishing a story is the most difficult part. For me it's not so much saying goodbye to characters (I write short stories, and a lot of the characters are based to some degree on myself, so I can't really miss them), it's about finding the right ending, the one that indicates that my storytelling is done, that whatever happens next I can do no more for those characters, that they will go on to live their lives, and their lives don't need telling anymore.

Once in a while, I finish a story. I write down the last sentence and I know it's done. It's complete, it's a story. It's finished. And that's when the real work starts. I've said before "I don't think about the writing when I am writing the story". This is because you get to do it after. Once the plot is there, the characters are talking, I know who they are, what they think, how they speak, I know what happens, how the story starts and how it ends and why it ends there. Now the time has come to concentrate on the writing. I sit down, usually in the quiet of my own room (I can't do this on the tube or in a café as I do most other writing) and I reread what I've written. And I trash it. I cross out, I rewrite, I find other ways to say what I've said. I remove sentences. I even remove things that I think are beautiful, once in a while, things I think are necessary. I strip the story to the bare minimum of words. I try to simplify to the maximum, and then rebuild it. This process is hard. There are sentences I am so pleased with that I hate to let them go. But I do. Of course I do. Because part of the writing is the edit. Making sure that the story isn't just what you want to tell, but also the way you want to tell it. Some stories feel like long sentences, sweet words, slowly melting like a summer afternoon. Other stories are short, harsh, dry, violent. To the point. This is where a good friend who isn't afraid of telling you "that's crap" is very useful. Because sometimes it's hard to let go, or to see clearly. Giving your story to someone else takes a lot of courage. This person is going to cross out what they think is bad, tell you how they would have written something. They won't have any prior knowledge as to why you chose that word, or that name, or why you made that sentence shorter. It doesn't matter. If they are a good reader, they will be right, and you need to listen to them. Yes, find someone who isn't afraid to trash your story, they will be your first and best reader, and as much as they correct, they will appreciate the fact that they were the first.

And then I'm done. The last word is changed, the last sentence finished, and the story and the language become one. I save the file, because by this point I've probably typed up the story and printed it to add things and change things a few times, and I am done. If the story is good I will pick it up a few years after I wrote it. I start reading, and I won't be able to stop. Most of the time, I will read it twice, or even three times in disbelief, because the story will have become something else. No longer mine, no longer my story, but a story. I will recognize it, but I will also be unable to change it. It will stand on its own, and I will have let it go, and it will belong (if a story ever belongs to anyone but itself) to its readers, me included, but in a different way. The story has grown up.