Let Me Tell You Why I Write …

“Let me tell you one thing about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would never have needed to write a novel.” Joan Didion

I understand what Joan Didion means – you wouldn’t write a novel, would you, if you could possibly avoid it? Because as all mere mortal writers know, writing a novel is just as Flannery O’Connor said: “a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.”

For me, the hair falling out bit seems to start as soon as I look at the blank page. The thought of finding thousands and thousands of words based on a story idea which is nothing more than a hunch is immobilising. Even so, something compels me to carry on. But rather than write, I prepare to write. I make notes. I clear out my writing desk. I go on long walks. I draft articles. This goes on for days and weeks and sometimes even months. I am not procrastinating and or even waiting for “the words to come.” What I am doing is summoning up the courage to start. I am persuading myself that I am a good writer and getting ready to gamble. Yes, gamble.  Because like Margaret Atwood, I think writing a novel is a gamble. Trouble is, I hate gambling. Gambling is a mug’s game. I know this because I used to be a croupier. I saw people lose their homes, their pensions, even their life savings on a supposed lucky number or a hunch.

“Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you are on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.” Margaret Atwood

But, then, at some point during this not-writing stage my idea takes a real grip, like a dog with its teeth in my calf, which I can’t shake off. A first sentence swims around my head. A door to a new world beckons. I try to resist but I can’t.  My fingers start to tremble. It’s time to throw caution to the wind, stop whining and start writing.

I write as fast as I can for at least six hours every day. I take the weekend off and start all over again, and then do it all again, and again. I try not to edit as I go because I don’t want to waste time looking for a perfect sentence or word which I may later edit out – but sometimes I can’t help myself. My goal is to get down as many paragraphs and chapters as possible. It is VERY boring work. More often than not I don’t feel like doing it, but I peg away and peg away.

“One of the great secrets of success is ‘pegging away.’ No disappointment must discourage, and a run back must often be allowed, in order to take a longer leap forward.”  Amelia E Barr

Eventually, after months and months, if I am lucky, I have around 100,000 words of a story in front of me. The story is very crude, but it exists and it has rhythm and characters with shapes and voices and I am excited. Now comes the best bit, the rewriting, i.e.: the slashing and burning.  Like Janet Burroway, I enjoy “wrestling a sentence to the page.” I get a rush when I discover a new image and am thrilled when  a character or place fully comes to life. I often think this thrill must be similar to how the gambler feels the moment before the sliding silver roulette ball drops into one of those red-black beds in the roulette wheel. It is the excitement of not knowing yet believing everything is possible. It’s a bit like being God. I never want this editing stage to end. I correct and select to the point of exhaustion.

Eventually, when I feel about one hundred years old and I have no friends left because I’ve been locked away for so long that everyone

thinks I’m dead; when I’ve started talking to myself and become so incoherent that my family are whispering behind my back about my erratic behaviour, and my sister is thinking of getting me certified; when I really can’t rewrite another word; and even though I know my story is still not perfect – but perfection is the voice of oppression, isn’t it? – I make myself stop. I reluctantly write that final last word and feel terrible. Like the writer Mary Karr, I get sick. But I am also happy. The gamble paid off. I found out what my story was and told it the way I wanted to. It is an intoxicating feeling. It makes every decaying tooth and clump of lost hair and the being sick worth it. And I would do it all over again – and probably will. You see, unlike Joan Didion, I know why I write: I write because I am a gambler.

“It may not look like pleasure, because the difficulties can make me morose and distracted, but that’s what it is – the pleasure of telling the story I mean to tell as wholly as I can tell it, of finding out in fact what the story is, by working around the different ways of telling it.” Alice Munro

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Marianne Wheelaghan, author and co-founder of a creative writing school, has written two novels, both available on Amazon. Read more about Marianne on her blog, and follow her on Twitter, GoodReads, and Pinterest.

Tags: about writing, creative writing process, essays on writing, featured, Marianne Wheelaghan

Category: Being a Writer, British Women Writers, On Writing, Women Writing Fiction