…or, at least, Ten Quick Questions for Kevin Wignall, very well formulated and asked by Kevin Holtsberry.
Check it out.
(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)
*A night and the next morning. How am I ever going to write another novel?
A week ago I finally finished the pre-page-proof edits for The Tourist, which will be looked over and hopefully approved by my US editor. Despite some grinding moments when I despised the entire book and wondered if anyone would be put out if I just sank the damned project, during the final run-through I was surprised by how good the results were. I could finally see why various people had gotten excited about it. The writing is some of the best I’ve ever pulled off, and the story really does move, and to interesting and unexpected places.
I don’t bring this up in order to pat myself on the back, but to wonder aloud about what novelists know and don’t know when they’re writing. Certainly we know a lot—we know our characters and the storyline as we work it out, and we may even have some idea what we want to achieve as a whole (though more often than not we achieve something different). But what we don’t know—or, what I never know—is the cumulative effect of all our choices. How will the word choices and characters and narrative structure and story and theme, once combined, look?
The cooking analogy would ask: Do you know, as you mix the spices, just how the final dish will taste? For myself, like in my cooking, I’m usually the last one to know.
I don’t know because I don’t usually have “distance” from the text, and when I do it’s short-lived. For those of us working on a yearly schedule, who also need up to a year to actually write the book, this kind of distance is hard to come by, simply because you run out of months. So, in essence, I spend a year of my life pretty much in the dark about what, finally, I’m writing. It’s only at the end of the year that I (hopefully) gain enough distance to see what I’ve done.
It’s a curious thing, knowing that you have so little conscious control over the variables of your story, yet still devoting up to a year hammering away at it. And it’s of course refreshing when the result ends up better, not worse, than what you imagined. In fact, when it works it’s kind of magical. Sometimes, your unconscious even serves up bits of wisdom that you never would’ve committed yourself to in a normal conversation.
For example, when I finished Liberation Movements, in my editor’s comments she said, “It’s strange, Olen. You’ve written these other books about how politics control people’s lives. In this one, it’s almost as if you’re saying politics don’t even matter.” I puzzled over that for about a minute, then it hit me—yes, that’s exactly what the book was saying. Not only that, but I even believed it! Yet I’d not actually admitted this to myself before that point, not consciously, even though it was the book’s central theme.
But the writer’s unconscious doesn’t just serve up bits of tin-pot philosophy. It does more practical things too:
A few weeks ago I got a lovely email from my French editor, saying how pleased he was to continue publishing me, and praising aspects of this new book. In particular, he pointed out my pronounced sense of realism, particularly in the Paris sections, which take up a quarter or so of the book. I’d previously received green lights on the Paris sections from my agent, who’s half-French, and my editor, who spends a large chunk of each year in France. But it was shocking to hear of this from a lifelong Parisian, particularly since…
…I’ve never been to Paris. Or to France, for that matter.
Again, this isn’t about me, not really. It’s really about the imagination and the unconscious, and how it can pull off shocking feats on a regular basis, if you just let it. I’ve not always been able to do this, and I know it doesn’t move in a consistent flow, but sometimes you get a little kick that reminds you that there’s something to be said for believing the occasional nugget of wisdom from your imagination, or at least treating it seriously.
So, on that note, happy holidays…
(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)
Today I ran across Doris Lessing’s Nobel-acceptance speech, and it’s nice to read someone who’s sticking to her rather critical view of the contemporary world:
We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers.
What has happened to us is an amazing invention - computers and the internet and TV. It is a revolution. This is not the first revolution the human race has dealt with. The printing revolution, which did not take place in a matter of a few decades, but took much longer, transformed our minds and ways of thinking. A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked: “What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print?” In the same way, we never thought to ask, “How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging etc?”
life
most Nobel speeches are
I’ve been out of touch the last few weeks, and am still in Novi Sad, yet things are markedly different for me. I don’t mean book deals or anything like that, but my marital status. Yesterday evening, in a room in a Novi Sad government building, Slavica and I put the final official stamp on what our relationship has essentially been for years—a marriage.
It was a lovely ceremony, which I didn’t really expect from a civil office, and the vows were remarkably progressive. They were written by DuÅ¡an Radović, a poet who, sick of the “official” wedding vows, used his influence to have his own made official.
Though I don’t have the English version with me (an interpreter was on hand to let me know what I was agreeing to), I remember that one part of it effectively told me to “Forget about what the law says about marriage; if your union is defined by the laws of the land, then it’s not worth having. It’s up to you to define what marriage is.” A beautiful sentiment, I thought.
Afterward, ten or so of us went out of town to SalaÅ¡ 137. SalaÅ¡ means something like “farmhouse”, and in this area they’re set up like little retreats, each given a number rather than a name. They set up some country-style rooms, have horses on tap, batches of farm dogs, and a lot of really good local (Vojvodina) food. The house wine was excellent, and so was the company.
Anyway, I have no wisdom to impart, no tales of Balkan excess, just that nice feeling that comes with some of those big moments in your life, that makes you think it might all turn out all right after all.
(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)
A while ago (back in July), Shots Magazine kindly asked if I could put together a short article on “writing in exile”—a term that sounds more heavy and romantic than it actually is. I happily put my pen to it, and the result can be found here, alongside other interviews, reviews and articles.
Otherwise, life is in a bit of an uproar as we move gradually to a new apartment and deal with the everchanging world of impending parenthood. From Monday will begin an approximate week of zero internet access, which is probably for the best, but once it’s reestablished expect more chatter from this corner.
(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)
Kevin Holtsberry’s come through again, taking his review of my latest to the National Review. It went up a day or so ago, and I noticed with pleasure that it gave Victory Square a shot of adrenaline, knocking it out of its 200,000 range, back down to 19,000. Nice work, and congrats to Kevin on spreading his excellent opinions to the pages of the NR.
In other news: “Kevin Wignall’s masterpiece on European crisis”
(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)