Lawrence Block - Writing the Novel

Some days the writing flows and I can do my five pages in one glorious hour. When that happens, I’m free to do as I wish with the rest of the day. I’ve learned to stop writing then and there, because my mind’s tired after five pages, whether it took me one hour or three hours to get them written.

Other days, the writing pours like January molasses. Maybe I’ll take five hours to do as many usable pages. Those days aren’t much fun, but I’ve learned to keep at it for as long as it takes, because for all the agony of their composition, those pages are apt to read just as smoothly as the ones that came with no effort. If I threw in the sponge after three hours, those pages wouldn’t get written.

I had much the same system at the beginning of my career, when I wrote soft-core sex novels in two weeks’ time, five days on, a weekend off, then five days to finish the book. Then I wrote twenty pages a day where now I write five, but the basic principle was the same.

The number of pages you shoot for is for you to decide. My pace changes depending on the book I’m writing. Some novels seem to demand a more intense level of concentration, and a smaller number of pages will tire me. Others, for whatever reason, move at a faster natural pace.

You may find that one page a day is as much as you can easily manage. That’s fine. Work six days a week and you’ll produce a book in a year. You may find that it’s no strain for you to turn out ten or twenty or thirty pages at a stretch. That’s fine, too — enjoy yourself. My questionnaire responses suggest that a preponderance of pros do four or five pages a day, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be less than professional by shooting for a higher or lower number. They settled on that figure because they found out it seemed to be right for them, just as you’ll find out what’s the right pace for your own novel.

One thing you might try to avoid, in this connection, is attempting to extend your productivity. This sort of overload principle works fine in weightlifting, where one’s ability to manage more weight increases as one lifts more weight, but it doesn’t work that way in writing. It’s tempting to try to do a little more each day than we did the day before, and I still find myself intermittently struggling to resist this particular temptation, even after lo these many years. If I can do five pages today, why can’t I do six tomorrow? And seven the day after? For that matter, if I really catch fire and do seven today, that proves I can definitely do a minimum of seven tomorrow. Doesn’t it?

No, it doesn’t.

What does happen, in point of fact, is that this sort of overload generally leads to exhaustion. Then I can rationalize taking a couple days off — after all, I’m ahead of schedule, aren’t I? — and the next thing I know I’m not producing consistently at all. I’m writing in fits and starts, stealing days off and then trying to make up for them by doubling up on my work. The book suffers, the manuscript takes longer than it would have taken otherwise, and once again the tortoise nips the hare at the finish line.

The motto is “Easy does it.” Find your right pace, make sure it’s one that’s not going to be a strain, and then stick with it. If you do have a day when you write an extra page or two, don’t waste time thinking about it. Regard it as a freak occurrence, nothing to be deplored but nothing you should make an effort to repeat. When the next day dawns, resume your regular pace and go on writing the book one day at a time.

For years I proofread my manuscripts after they were finished. I hated doing this. When I wrote “The End” in the middle of the last page I felt like a marathon runner crossing the finish line. I wanted to lie down, not jog back over the route and see if I’d dropped my keys somewhere along the way.

As a result, I tended to give my scripts a rather slipshod proofing. That wasn’t disastrous — I tend to turn out a reasonably clean script anyway — but after a number of years I found a way to avoid being confronted with that unpleasant postwriting chore, and it paid unanticipated dividends. So I’ll share it with you.

I proofread the book as I go along. Not a page at a time, certainly, but either a chapter at a time or a day’s work at a time. I perform this little chore either at the end of the day’s work or before beginning work the following day.

The effect of this ongoing proofreading is threefold. First, it keeps me very much in the book, especially if I do the job immediately before beginning the next day’s work. In the course of proofreading, I’m picking up where I left off and getting my mind set for resuming the narrative.

Second, I do a much more thorough job of proofing when I have a molehill to deal with instead of a mountain. I’m able to take the time to notice changes I want to make. I can spot stylistic irregularities and change them then and there.

Third, I’m more comfortable with what I’ve done because those pages stacked to the left of my typewriter are in more finished form. True, I may wind up rewriting the whole damned thing — but that’s immaterial at this stage. As far as I’m concerned while I’m writing, those neatly stacked pages are what the linotype operator is going to set type from.

Another stray word about proofreading, while we’re on the subject. While I’m writing, I tend to xxxxxx out mistyped words and failed phrases. I obliterate these xxxxxx’d out passages with a thick marking pen when I proofread. To expedite matters, I go through the pages once just dealing with the xxxxxx’d out portions; then I can concentrate more deliberately on the actual text when I go through it a second time with a fine-tipped pen.

Seems to me you’re making a pretty broad assumption. You seem to take it for granted that all I have to do is put my body in front of my typewriter and everything will follow. What about the days when my mind’s a blank?

There are a couple of ways to answer that question. For openers, I’d have to say that the most important step I can take to assure that I’ll get work done today is to plant my behind in my desk chair and face the typewriter. While it may not be absolutely true that if you bring the body the mind will follow, the reverse is indisputable; if I don’t show up for work I’m not going to get work done. Period.

When in spite of this my mind doesn’t seem to be doing its job, it usually means one of two things. Either I’m paralyzed by an inability to figure out What Happens Next, or my mental attitude is keeping my fingers off the keys, making me dissatisfied with my sentences even as I try to form them in my mind.

The first problem, being unable to decide What Happens Next, is one that turns out to be projection a good nine-tenths of the time. Most frequently I know what’s going to happen in the five pages I intend to write today; I’m paralyzed because I’m worrying about what’s going to happen tomorrow, or the day after, or sometime in early April.

That way lies madness. The better I’m able to focus only on what I’m going to write today, the better equipped I find myself to do a good job with today’s writing.

And tomorrow generally takes care of itself. Understand, I’m not denigrating the value of true and proper planning. That’s why outlining can be so useful, whether your outline is formal or unwritten. And planning continues to be useful on a day by day basis. I often find myself looking up from a magazine of an evening and letting my mind ruminate upon some plot problem a few days in the book’s future.

But when I’m writing, I do best if I concern myself only with that day’s writing. Because that’s all I’m in a position to deal with at the time. I can no more write tomorrow’s pages today than I can breathe tomorrow’s air today. The fact that I don’t know what I’m going to write tomorrow doesn’t matter much today. I don’t have to know until tomorrow. And, when tomorrow comes, I’ll probably have the answer when I need it. It’ll grow out of what I manage to write today and whatever processes my unconscious mind sets in motion between now and then.