Writing the Novel_ From Plot to Print - Lawrence Block [63]
Retype the last few pages. This is a good way to get back into the rhythm of your writing, whether you’ve been away from it for a short or long period of time. I’ve heard of writers who make it a practice to begin each day’s work by retyping the last page they wrote the day before. The habit may have started when they left off in the middle of the page and wanted to start in on a clean page; it endured when they found it helped them recapture the flow of the previous day’s writing.
Break in the middle of a sentence. I’ve read this advice in various forms over the years. Some people advocate stopping at the bottom of the fifth page of the day, say, even if it’s smack in the middle of a hyphenated word. Others are less compulsive about where you stop but merely suggest that it be at a point where you know precisely what sentence you’re going to write next.
The theory here is that you’ll have an easier time picking the book up the next day because you already know what your first sentence or two will be. I offer this suggestion because it evidently works for some people, but I’m not going to tout it too strongly because I’ve really made some grim mornings for myself this way.
Imagine, for instance, sitting down to the typewriter and seeing this looking back at you. “She looked up at me, bright-eyed, and her smile was like….”
Like what, for the love of God? I obviously had a simile in mind when I wrote what I wrote, and I’ll never come up with a new simile and believe it to be as good as the lost one, and in the meantime I may spend half an hour scratching my head and trying to recall what I was thinking of. If I’ve got a good sentence in mind, the best thing I can do with it is commit it to paper before I lose it. So my own advice would be more along the lines of this:
Find a logical place to break off. At the end of a chapter, or the end of a scene, or the end of a paragraph, or at the very least at the end of a sentence. Not only does this avoid the sort of minor aggravation described above, but I believe it helps focus the attention of the subconscious mind upon the new chapter or scene or whatever to be tackled next.
You’ve abandoned books—quite a few of them, from the sound of it. And you’ve already said there’s a strong possibility that my first novel won’t prove publishable, that its main function may be as a learning experience. Suppose I reach a point where I’m sure it’s not going to succeed. Wouldn’t I be justified in abandoning it?
No.
Oh, you can abandon the book. For that matter, you don’t have to start writing it in the first place.
But if you do undertake to write a first novel, I strongly urge you to finish it. Whether or not you lose faith in it along the way. Whether or not you’re convinced it stinks. No matter what, stay with it a day at a time and see it through to completion. If its chief function is to be educational, rest assured that you’ll learn infinitely more by finishing a first novel than by casting it aside.
I’d suggest further that you complete a first draft from beginning to end before getting involved with substantial revision. There’s one exception—if you want to go back and start over after you’ve done forty or fifty pages, feel free to do so. But after you’ve passed the fifty-page mark, I would recommend that you push onward to the end before giving any thought to rewriting.
I have a reason for this stance. I’ve observed that most of the people who start first novels never finish them, and I’ve come to believe that actually seeing a book through to the finish line is the most important thing you can do in your first essay at the novel. This to my mind is what separates the sheep from the goats and the ribbon from the clerks: the determination to stay with a book until it’s done, for better or for worse.
If you abandon a first novel, the chances of your ever writing and completing a second novel are rather slim. If you pause in the course of a first novel for substantial revision, the chances of your