Lawrence Block - Writing the Novel

Stay awake.I heard very early on that a writer works twenty-four hours a day, that the mind is busy sifting notions and possibilities during every waking hour and, in a less demonstrable manner, while the writer sleeps as well. I liked the sound of this from the start — it was a nice rejoinder to my then wife if she said anything about my putting in only two hours a day at the typewriter, or skipping work altogether and going to the friendly neighborhood pool hall for the afternoon. But I’m not sure I believed it.

I believe it now, but with one qualification. I believe we can be on the job twenty-four hours a day. I believe we can also choose not to, and those of us who make this choice severely limit ourselves.

A great many writers use alcohol and drugs, ostensibly to stimulate their creativity. This very often seems to work in the beginning; the mind, jarred out of its usual channels by this unaccustomed chemical onslaught, may respond by digging new channels for itself. Similarly, some artists early in their careers find hangovers a creative if hardly comfortable time. The process of withdrawal from the drug evidently has a stimulating effect.

Eventually, these same writers commonly use alcohol and drugs to unwind, to turn off the spinning brain after the day’s work is finished. The process is not true relaxation, of course, but anesthesia. One systematically shuts off the thinking and feeling apparatus for the night. For those who ultimately become drug- or alcohol-dependent — and a disheartening proportion of the members of our profession wind up in this category — the results are devastating. One reaches a stage wherein work is impossible without the drug or the drink, and this stage is in turn succeeded by one in which work is impossible with or without the substance. Alcoholism and drug dependency have ended too many successful careers prematurely, while they’ve nipped no end of promising careers in the bud.

It’s hardly revolutionary to advise an alcoholic writer not to drink, anymore than it’s a controversial stance to urge diabetics not to binge on sugar. But I’d suggest further that heavy drinking or drug use is severely detrimental even to the writer who does not become alcoholic or drug-dependent, simply because it shuts off his mind.

For years I drank when my day’s work was done, convinced that it helped me relax. One thing it indisputably did was take my mind off my work. This, to be sure, was one of the things I wanted it to do; I felt I ought to be able to leave the work behind when I left the typewriter.

But writing, and especially novel writing, just doesn’t work that way. Writing the novel is an ongoing organic process, and we carry the book with us wherever we go. It’s during the period between one day’s work and the next that our minds play, both consciously and subconsciously, with the ideas that will enable us to perform creatively when we resume writing. We may rest the mind during these times but we hurt ourselves creatively if we shut our minds off completely. Later on we’ll talk about the value of daily writing. It’s similarly related to the notion of keeping oneself present in one’s book, day in and day out. Extended breaks in the writing interrupt this continuity, and so do those interruptions of consciousness or attentiveness or awareness caused by heavy drinking and drug use.

More recently, marijuana has been touted as a creative stimulant, presumably nonaddictive, harmless, etc. Its addictive properties and harmlessness aside, I have found that its potential for creative stimulation is largely illusory. The common marijuana experience consists of making marvelous seminal mental breakthroughs which, hard to grasp as the smoke itself, are gone the next morning. If only one could remember, if only one could hold onto those fantastic inspired insights....

Well, one can. The story’s been told of the fellow who kept paper and pencil at the ready, determined to write down his brilliant insights before they were lost. He awoke the following morning, recollected that he’d had a fantastic insight and that for once he’d managed to write it down. He wasn’t sure that it contained the absolute secret of the universe, but he knew it was dynamite.

He looked, and there on the bedside table was his pad of paper, and on it he had written, “This room smells funny.”

Whether to smoke or drink or pop pills is an individual decision, as is the extent to which you may care to employ these substances. I would suggest, though, that if you do elect to drink or drug heavily, you do so between novels, not during them. And recognize that whatever excellence your work has is in spite of the substances that you’re using, not because of them.

Stay hungry.Some time ago a friend of mine was on a television talk show with several other mystery writers, Mickey Spillane among them. After the program ended, Spillane announced that they’d neglected to talk about the most important topic. “We didn’t say anything about money,” he said.

He went on to explain that he’d spent several years on an offshore island in South Carolina, where he did nothing too much more taxing than swim and sunbathe and walk the beach for hours at a time. “Every once in a while it would come to me that it’d be fun to get started on a book,” he said. “I thought I’d keep my mind in shape and I’d enjoy doing it. But I could never get a single idea for a story. I’d sit and sit, I’d walk for miles, but I couldn’t get an idea.

“Then one day I got a call from my accountant to say that the money was starting to get low. Nothing serious, but I should start thinking about ways to bring in some dough. And boy, did I get ideas for books!”

Money makes the mare go. It’s very often the spur for what we might prefer to think of as pure creativity. I don’t believe for a moment that financial insecurity is essential to a writer’s imagination. In my own case, really severe money problems have occasionally kept me from thinking of anything beyond the desperate nature of the situation, leading to a vicious circle verging on writer’s block. Money doesn’t have to be the spur or the genuinely rich members of our profession would not continue to write productively and well. A man like James Michener, who consistently gives away most of what he earns writing best sellers, is certainly not driven by the desire for cash.

But he’s spurred on by something. There is a hunger at the root of all our creative work, whether it is for wealth or recognition or a sense of accomplishment or some tangible proof that we are not worthless human beings after all. To return to an earlier metaphor, we might call that hunger the yeast that starts that dark ferment working down in the unconscious.

If we can stay in touch with that hunger, the pot will keep bubbling — and ideas that engage us will continue rising to the surface.

When an idea does come along, make quite sure you don’t forget it.

I would recommend carrying a notebook around as routinely as you carry your house key or wallet. Whenever an idea turns up, make a note of it. The simple act of writing down a few words will help to fix the idea in your mind so your subconscious can get hold of it.

Before you go to bed at night, make a point of glancing through the notebook. If you have the wrong attitude, this process can simply load you up with guilt over all the fiction ideas you’ve left undeveloped. Don’t let this happen. Those scribbles and scraps in your notebook aren’t things you have to do, and they’re certainly not projects which must be undertaken right away. The notebook’s a tool. It’s there to make sure you don’t lose sight of things that might turn out to be worth remembering; by referring to it frequently, you use it to give your memory a jog and stimulate the unconscious development of the idea over a period of time.