Turning the corner

Can you say that without foreboding? I feel like I'm really getting into it: although it felt like I was re-treading the same ground yesterday, the truth is the writing's getting tighter and I'm still getting about 1100 done, plus research. I resolved the other night to write out my ideas just before I go to bed - it seems that after the first joint, I'm thrumming with them. And naturally forget them in the morning. I've done a bit of reading - the autobiography of the Mother (from the Aurobindo ashram in Pondicherry), bits of the Annie Besant autobiography, the usual research - books on eccentrics and Sydney history. I've ordered a book called Razorhurst about the gangwars in Darlinghurst at the time - I suspect it owes a bit to Blaikie. And I have those four books to do for the ALR.

The problem is I know I'm going to have to get rid of the Rocks and work out definitely whether Martha's a criminal with boho inclinations or a boho with criminal ones. I just can't work it out, and until I do, despite the word count being fine, the writing stutters a little. But if I leave Martha and Argyle for now, will I lose momentum? I've lost a book - Tiv Dreaming - which would give me a better idea of where to go. Martha's meant to be a mix of Tilly Devine, Kate Leigh and Dulcie Deamer - but I don't want her too similar to the Boy's mother (working name Elizabeth Braithwaite). I'll give it another go today - if I don't get any joy then I'll work a bit more on the framers while I research.

Voices, problems

A couple of problems:

1. Narrative voice - people who've read or reviewed the m/s complain the voice isn't clear. But that's the case with most traditional omniscient third narrations, and nobody seems to mind. The authorial voice is either forgotten or becomes another character. While the first appeals, the second doesn't at all - even reading Somerset Maugham, his narratorial character sometimes became annoying. It's clear, for example, that Gogol is present in Dead Souls; I don't want to be present, but how do I present those different narratives and stories without appearing David Mitchell gimmicky? I've thought about writing in different modes: popular history, short story, memoir, diary, epistolary; but in at least three, I'm stuck with first person and the problems that come with that perspective. Also, writing in a pastiche of popular history, I can't describe intimate moments, only those that are known or reported. I wonder if I've painted myself into a corner there?

2. Fluency - when I first started re-writing, I felt confident, even if, writing when Leela was just born, it was overwhelming. Re-reading what I wrote then, I was impressed by the fluency, but I'm also aware I need to work fast: 5 000 words is too long for an intro. Although I promised myself I wouldn't, I looked at the very first draft I'd ever done. Fussy, overwritten - and yet Argyle Andrews had reached 12 and moved out of home by 2 500 words. I need to strike a balance between brevity and detail.

3. Editing - I thought I'd edit on Fridays; I ended up editing all week. And losing about half of what I wrote. I'm not worried about that, but I seem afflicted with the worst doubt - I can't seem to keep striking on past that edit point. I've wrestled with the setup - I want it to stay in the Rocks, but I know I have to get Martha and family up to East Sydney or the Cross soon. So why keep the Rocks? Is it sentimentality? The idea of the beginning of a national narrative? Don't know - but it's proving a tight fit. I just have to keep writing, I guess.

4. Progress - I aim for 1000 - 1500 a day. I know it's a lot, but I seemed to write that when I first started. I haven't added anything much to the word count since Friday week ago, and I seem to be fitting my writing around my life, rather than the other way round. Of course, it's having a little child, supporting April, trying to get everything organised. I know I'll always have stuff to do, but I can't seem to get started. If I had a big wedge of novel with the narrative moving along, I wouldn't worry; but I just can't concentrate or focus lately, especially this past week. I have ideas - especially late at night - and an overwhelming feeling I have no time. I wonder if this is the problem: I feel so stressed I have no time, I'm caught between rushing it and stalling. Whenever I have an idea, I'm too tired to work on it. And when I try to remember it the next day, I feel as if I'm working blind. I get uneasy about what I've written, deleting and re-adding it; yet I know that the more confident I am, the more fluent the writing will be.

Baby's crying - a tooth coming. I feel - without being melodramatic - the same way.

Okay, okay, I promise

Second week - do you get second week blues? Last week, full of good intentions, I wrote nearly 7 000 words. This week, the going's been harder. Firstly, editing: I know there's a problem with the Argyle narrative: it's too crowded. I've been trying to edit it down, simplify it a bit, but the problem is that it's hard to see how it fits on the page (as it turns out, I'm having printer problems). Lots of subordinate clauses, trying to say as much as I can. Part of it is the pastiche: I'm trying to write popular history, still organising the story and characters. Part of it is not wanting to let go of the Rocks or Uncle Jerry, and trying to fit them into the new narrative. I looked over the very first draft - it's not that well-written (too many parentheses, an irritating narratorial voice) but it moves so much faster - I get Argyle out of the Rocks and up to his first father in less than 3 600 words. And even then, it reads slow.

I'm up to 4 500 and Argyle hasn't even appeared yet. I know there's too much exposition, and Martha over-dominates, but I cut 2 000 and I'm still looking for cuts (I edited the Case History I wrote last week and edited 500 to make it closer in length to the others). Why am I writing so much? I'm being careful with adverbs and unnecessary parts but I can't work out how to cut more. The aim is to make something so spare that the reader imagines it themselves: evoking rather than describing. And I do manage it, mostly. But those words!

Last week, I read the New Yorker Christmas lit special. Some great articles, including an inspiring one about Pinter. But especially about one about the fraught relationship between Raymond Carver and his editor/mentor Gordon Lish. What surprised me was that it was Lish who was responsible for the minimalism Carver was famous for: he often cut the stories by up to 70%. Weirdly, Carver was ambivalent about it - Lish seemed very controlling, and he couldn't have shone rocks: there was something inherently good in those stories; but without the cuts, they're too long. Like this opening.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/24/071224fa_fact

Now, I'm not leaving that responsibility with any editor, but I wish I could see where to make those cuts. Or even better, how to write it down without needing to edit back. It's that balance between fluency and restraint: I suppose I shouldn't be too hard on myself, given it's my first week and a half back.

My other problems this week have been settling in. I just can't seem to do it. I write for an hour, then faff around for an hour. It's tiring. I can't seem to concentrate and it's heavy going. I have edited back this week, so I've only really written maybe another 1 000 since Monday. I'm also getting distracted by other stories - Kiki of Montparnasse or Dulcie Deamer, eccentric, strong women who I want to model on Martha. But I have to be careful of not stuffing the story or character with too much.

One thing though: Argyle Andrews seems a presence, elusive, unknowable. I like this. It's as I want him to be. I just need to excavate a bit more around him, or bring him to the fore and move the story as quick as I can: I'm aiming for 25 000 a section, which means I have to work quick and sparely.

Lastly, I'm finding it difficult to write this diary. I keep telling myself I should, but I'm hopeless. When? Before I start, summarising the day before? Or after I've written, when I don't know if I have any perspective on it? I'm so tired at the end of the session - and so busy for the rest of the day - I don't know where or how to fit it. I'll keep trying though: what else can I do?

Word Count: 550

The Obvious Question...

... is: why write? I wonder, on reflection, if the idea of asking is itself an aversion, a procrastination to the act itself. It's too easy to say because I do, or because I can't do anything else; but although it's much much better to write first and think about it later (and by that I mean the themes, the symbology, the motivations), it's also important to think about your reasons for writing - or more specifically, why you're writing something.

I wonder this about why I've persisted with this novel for so long. I know the ending; I know the major plot points; I know most of the major characters. I just don't know how, exactly, to bring them all together. Martha, for example, has changed: from the ingenuous whore-with-a-heart-of-gold, she's become something much more realistic, if still fantastic. I like her more. I had a big problem working out how to merge her criminality and keep her likeability: I've now worked out that the best means is to hint at it, declaiming it with her refutations and denials, so there's still some ambiguity about whether she is or isn't. The point is: no matter how much I can guess about where the ending will be, I can't guess who the characters are or what they'll do. I have to just let them do it and trust they'll get to the end I've planned for them. Or not. Let's see.

But back to why I'm writing this novel, and why I've been doing it for so long. Is it because it has been so long, and I just want to get it finished? Perhaps. But there's lots of other stories and half-started novels that I haven't bothered completing. Is it because I like it (the plot, the characters, the writing) so much? Not really - I mean, there's a magic to it, but it's hard for me to tell objectively now - it's been too long. And there've been many moments when I just haven't been able to work it out at all, let alone like it very much! But it is something I think is worth reading, and therefore worth writing. I just hope my abilities and stamina are up to the task.

Work this week's been both satisfying and exhausting. I feel so tired every afternoon, though I don't feel as if I've done that much. My word count's been steadily climbing, though I think that this is a combination of enthusiasm and slightly careless writing. I aim to do 1500 but these should be careful words, and although I know it's only a first draft, I'd like to slow it down a bit so the words came more fluently. I don't want to do too much post-editing or reconstruction - it makes it messy and disjointed. Having said that, I did re-edit a large portion of the History narrative, and it seems to work - for now. I'll do another review edit tomorrow.

I realise now that I've only sort of answered my opening question. Perhaps thinking about it too much can kill it. Perhaps it's the act of writing itself that reveals the answer.

Word Count: 1347 (reconstructed)

Nobody said it was going to be easy...

... on the very first day of writing the novel I've been writing sporadically since I was 19. It's always hard: that collision between expectation - 1500 words in the morning - and reality - 925 hard-fought words by 2 pm.

I've been both excited and daunted by sitting down with the novel again, especially after so long (first thing: remembering to sub "tongue sandwiches" for "lamingtons" in one Case History). I stopped writing in August 2006, when I handed in the excerpts for my thesis - my computer was stolen in the middle of a backup in September and I lost pretty much everything.

Then, a week after Leela was born, when I'd been contacted by a (my now) UK agent, and scrambled to write something in time for June or July, when I was planning on returning to London for my graduation (and to meet said agent).

I somehow managed about 5 000 words in a couple of weeks, writing when I could between teaching, finishing a 50 000 word ghost-written book, and feeds. But what I did manage to write was better than I'd expected - almost as I'd imagined it might be when I first started writing at 19.

Since then, it seems life's been so busy, I've neither had time to write the novel nor to write this blog. Even this year, with its early share of intrigue and heartache, has already passed two weeks before knowing it.

I'd originally thought I'd start writing in December, but the swathe of trips and loose-end-tying over November ran into the holidays. I did a lot - I had to. I'm the kind of writer who will rush to clean the lintels or repack teachests if there's any possibility they'll postpone the writing for a little while. So I bought a filing cabinet, starting culling all the clippings I'd shoved into boxes these past six years, tidied up iTunes, sorted out my photos, sold my Temptation prizes on ebay, organised myself as much as I could before the next impending start day of 14 January 2008.

Today is that day - and the clippings remain unfiled (though the folders are labelled). I'd had a strange, unsettling experience yesterday, almost walking right into my step-sister, whom I haven't spoken to or seen for nearly three years. All night my dreams curdled by unpleasant memories, stirred up after so long. But partly anxiety about today - starting something I'd never thought I'd ever be able to do. I'd always said I could only write when I didn't have to worry about money. Of course, being an unemployed, unpublished writer, that was an easy way out. Now, with money in the bank, I have no excuse: I just have to write. I know that - and despite being in a beautiful home, with a supportive partner and a set-up I never thought I'd ever have, it isn't any easier than when we had nothing. I still have to write.

I exaggerate (hey, I am a writer!). The first day's always hard: trying to work out where to make the first cut, re-exploring an imaginative topography that's become alien in your absence. Like returning to the garden of a fondly remembered home, finding the weeds have spattered shadows everywhere, and discovering all the tools in the shed at the bottom fence are rusty and blunt. Of course, as you get "into the swing of it", your arms become limberer, your back stops aching so much, the shears and shovels lose their splinters, become sharp with use, the weeds fall away, corners blossom with light.

But that first, aching, back-breaking day!

Today, I re-read the parts I wrote in back in March last year. They still seem to work, though of course there's a layer of first draft repetition and aimlessness that needs to be trimmed. It paces well, though I'm also unsure of the direction I want to take with the characters and the plot for each section. I have a figure of about 20 - 30 000 per main narrative, with a further 25 000 for the case histories and possibly about 15 000 for the framers. I'd need to be concise and quick: I want the story to develop as Chatwin or Garcia Marquez might: distilling a bildungsroman into 5 or 10 000 words, leaving the last ten thousand for the common plot. I also need to work out whether I keep the Australian parts magic-realist and the Indian parts realist - I'm inclined to this, though the Australian sections at this point seem too realistic: his mother Martha coming across equally charming and criminal, with none of the guilessness about her I liked in earlier (and less thought-out) drafts.

I've been doing lots of preparatory reading and research, especially about criminals and eccentrics in Sydney. I have a clearer idea about who I want Argyle Andrews to be, even if he may appear inchoate in the narrative (as he should be). However, there's a streak of nastiness in every criminal - how do I resolve that mendaciousness and ruthlessness in Argyle and his mother? I'll keep writing to 10 000 then review, I suppose, aiming for a review every two weeks as I go, not going too far ahead without editing and cutting back.

Today, though, I managed to write those painful 925 words after re-reading the Argyle section (5 000 words) - another Case History, which I know is too easy to do, but got me going, especially in the voice of the father. But I also realise now that the best CH's are the short ones: I'll aim for no more than 1 500 each to keep to the anticipated length of 25 000, a couple of hundred each here and there.

So tired now! I kept telling myself I'd try and exercise - Philip Roth walks four miles a day to keep fit - but I don't know when I'd manage it. I was up at my desk at 8 am, but didn't actually write anything till 10.30. And with Leela waking up at 3 lately, when would I get to go?

Excuses, I know. But now, I don't want to walk or run. I just want to sleep. A tidy pile of clippings lying, waiting.

Word Count: 927