Writing the Novel_ From Plot to Print - Lawrence Block [9]
This was a wonderful apprenticeship for me. I was by nature a fast writer, gifted with the ability to write smooth copy in a first draft; thus I could produce these books rapidly enough to make a satisfactory living. (They did not pay much, nor were there royalties to be had or subsidiary income to anticipate; it was indeed like working for the pulp magazines, with all sales outright.)
I learned a tremendous amount about how to write fiction, learning by the irreproachable method of trial and error. I could fool around with multiple viewpoint, with various sorts of plot structure, could in fact try whatever I wanted as long as I continued to write the books in English and keep the action coming. I got any number of auctorial bad habits out of my system. And, as I’ve said, I earned while I learned.
I’m acquainted with quite a few writers who started out by cultivating this particular secret garden. There were a number who never went on to anything else; they earned some easy money at sex novels until the novelty wore off but lacked the particular combination of talent and drive which it evidently takes to establish a writing career. The rest of us moved on, sooner or later, to other things. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t regard the experience as valuable.
In my own case, I suspect I found the sex-novel groove too comfortable and stayed with it too long, past the point where it was able to teach me much. I probably should have tried stretching my literary muscles a little sooner. On the other hand, I was painfully young then in virtually every possible way. The sex books put bread on the table and gave me the satisfaction of regular production and regular publication at a stage when I was incapable of writing anything much more ambitious. I can hardly regret the time I devoted to them.
Is the sex novel field a good starting place for a beginner today? I’m afraid not. Their equivalent in today’s market is the mechanical, plotless, hard-core porn novel, written with neither imagination nor craft and composed of one overblown sex scene after another. The books I wrote were quite devoid of merit—let there be no mistake about that—but by some sort of Gresham’s Law of Obscenity they’ve been driven off the market by a product that is indisputably worse. Any dolt with a typewriter and a properly dirty mind could write them; accordingly, the payment is too low to make the task worth performing. Finally, the books are published by the sort of men who own massage parlors and peep shows. You meet a better class of people on the subway.
There’s no need, though, to be nostalgic for the old days, be they the old days of pulp magazines or the old days of soft-core sex novels. There always seems to be an area in which to serve out a writer’s apprenticeship. We’ll see how to choose your own particular area in the next chapter; meanwhile, let it be said that for the foreseeable future it’s almost certain to be a novel of some sort.
The suggestion that a beginner ought to begin as a novelist is a radical one. The natural response is to offer some immediate objections. Let’s consider some of the most obvious ones.
Isn’t it harder to write a novel than a short story?
No. Novels aren’t harder. What they are is longer.
That may be a very obvious answer, but that doesn’t make it any less true. It’s the sheer length of a novel that the beginning writer is apt to find intimidating.
As a matter of fact, you don’t have to be a beginner to be intimidated in this fashion. My suspense novels generally stop at two hundred pages or thereabouts. On the several occasions when I’ve begun books I knew would run two or