The Importance Of Not Writing

Why Not Writing is as Important as Writing by Moira Forsyth, author of Tell Me Where You Are

I’m sometimes asked how long it takes to write a novel. I’ve only once, in all my years of producing novels, been able to write ‘full time’. Even then I had a big house to clean, a garden and two school age children to look after. Oh, and a husband. Still, housework can wait, children go to school and husbands to work, and the house is empty and quiet but for the ticking of a clock and the soft slap of the cat flap as a silent animal goes out or comes in.

That was luxury. I’ve never had it again. The marriage ended, I had to learn to be a householder on my own, in a different house. I also had to earn a living. However, I did start writing another novel, something unrelated to but born of the last few difficult and unhappy years. Something had changed, in me and in my writing, and this was the novel that was accepted by a publisher.  

It had been brewing for a long time, starting off as a thriller, but getting nowhere. Then I wrote a strong opening chapter that for more than a year, had nothing to go with it. Finally, after a good deal of thinking, I solved the problem, and wrote the rest of the novel in probably nine or ten months. I made use of the time I had on my own when the children were with their father, or still asleep (they were teenagers by now) on Sunday mornings.

Hodder had given me a two book deal, and in my excitement, I wrote the next novel in six months. Never so fast again. Too fast. There are things I would change, given the chance.

I can track how long The Treacle Well took to write, since it’s all in folders in my pc. Seven years. Seven years when I was earning a living, involved in Sandstone Press starting up, becoming editorial director, editing books by many other writers, and somehow keeping alive a picture of three little girls playing in a sunny garden, the scene that started the novel in my head. I suppose the majority was written in a year and a half, but there were many false starts before that, years of longing to get to it, but being unable to set aside enough time. A Message from the Other Side took much less time, but then, I can’t even remember writing that, so much else was going on. Well, no one else wrote it, so I must have done.

Now, if I’m asked that question, I say, a year or thinking and a year of writing. With a fair wind and not too many life crises, that seems about right.

It’s the year of thinking that matters. Contrary to the advice often given to writers, I don’t think you have to write every day, but if you’re incubating a novel, you should be thinking about it every day. It grows by thinking. The characters begin to talk to each other and gradually it takes shape. I’m a great believer in structure – something to hang the story on, something to reassure me that I will write it all, I’ll fill in the gaps and make the shape whole.

Where you do your thinking matters. You might say, anywhere, but anywhere can be noisy and full of interruptions. Insomnia is not so bad when you have a novel on the go, since it keeps you company in the wakeful night; the dead hours have a purpose. The trouble with that of course is that the beautifully rounded sentences you formed, the new ideas, vanish like dreams in the morning and anyway, there are a million things to do before you can get to the desk and the writing pad or the computer. I comfort myself with the thought that the best stuff lasts, and comes to the surface later, when you’re flying with the novel, and can hardly type fast enough. That though, is a later stage….

Every morning I go for a – sort of – run and that half hour out of doors is often remarkably productive. The characters start a new conversation, things move on suddenly, and you have a whole new scene or an unexpected plot development. Sometimes, even a new character, or a minor one shoving to the front and becoming significant. When that happens I realise I’m no longer even pretending to run. I’ve slowed right down, as if my thoughts must go at walking pace.

Years ago, Brian McCabe told me that when you’re stuck with a piece of writing, you should ‘take your character for a walk’ – in other words, get him our her moving, out of the house, and see what happens. But it’s just as important to take yourself for a walk – alone. Something Wordsworthian about being alone out of doors in a wild or at least quiet place, with nothing but trees and empty path and the birds: his most over-quoted poem, the one everyone has heard of, has its best lines in the last stanza when he refers to the ‘bliss of solitude’.

If you’re a writer, that’s what you need more than anything. In our bustling, over-crowded age, with its instant, constant, communication, it’s easy to forget that unless you are on your own, and like it, nothing good will ever be written.

—

The last thing Frances wants is a phone call from Alec, the husband who left her for her sister thirteen years ago. But Susan has disappeared, abandoning Alec and her daughter Kate, a surly teenager with an explosive secret. Reluctantly, Frances is drawn into her sister’s turbulent life.

About the Author:

Moira Forsyth grew up in Aberdeen, lived in England for nearly twenty years, and is now in the Highlands. She is the author of four previous novels and many short stories and poems published in anthologies and magazines. Waiting for Lindsay and David’s Sisters, originally published by Sceptre, are now available as e-books from Sandstone Press, which also published The Treacle Well in 2015.

Find out more about her on her Website http://moiraforsyth.com/

Link to the book: https://sandstonepress.com/books/tell-me-where-you-are-1

Publisher Twitter handle: https://twitter.com/sandstonepress

Author Twitter handle: https://twitter.com/moira_forsyth