Wow, it’s nice to finally catch up with you all and post on The Heroine Addicts! I’m in the middle of revisions of my latest wip right now, and am therefore by definition as mad as a box of frogs, but I’ll attempt to make a modicum of sense. Maybe.
A very talented author (who shall remain nameless, but might possibly not be unrelated to this blog—I shall say no more) said to me recently, that she was worried about beginning a project, because she wasn’t sure she could do it justice. It was perfect in her mind, she said, but she was worried that it wouldn’t work in the execution.
I think this is a familiar situation to a lot of us who are creative. We think up a story, or a picture, or a tune which seems utter perfection in our mind. It’s deep, it’s multifaceted, it’s beautiful. But when it comes to writing it down, or drawing it, or picking out the notes, it becomes something less than a dream or an idea. Something real. Something that can fail, and probably will, because how can any reality be as beautiful and perfect as a dream?
My stories always start out like a fizz in my head. They’re vague on details, except for some which are razor-sharp. They’re structurally incoherent, chaotic, exciting, full of infinite potential. And after writing several novels, I feel that my job isn’t to capture exactly this fizz on paper. If I tried to, I’d be endlessly chasing my tail, trying to make something good out of something that’s shapeless and doesn’t really exist. My job is to create something that is similar to the fizz, that has the same feeling to it, that is realistic, that has structure and plot and grammar and that works.
It’s always going to be a bad representation of what I dreamed it would be. The act of creating is, to some extent, always the act of failing to create what you really wanted to.
This could seem sort of depressing, and maybe it is, but actually I find it exciting. As writers, we can strive for perfection, but we can't always reach it. Maybe we never will. We have to do the best we can, right now, and always write with the possibility that we’re going to revise to make it better. Very often, the act of writing refines your original perfect idea, makes it sharper, or more unusual or interesting.
And in lots of important ways, the imperfect reality is better than the perfect dream. A dream stays inside your head, known by you alone. But you can let a real story go into the world and have readers experience it. And—here’s the best bit—a reader never saw your original dream. They don’t know your own personal version of what perfection is. All they see is the little bit of the fizz that you managed to get down on paper.
And maybe that little bit of the fizz will be perfection for them.
How do the stories you’ve written measure up to your dreams of what they will be? When you finish a project, do you feel that you’ve done everything you’d dreamed of doing, or is it a wonderful compromise?
Stay tuned till Sunday, when Anna Louise Lucia will be posting.
Oh, yes. The fizz, the joy and then the hard work. It's never quite what I envisaged. Sometimes it's a very long way from what I thought I would write. The fizz is the inspiration that takes me to the computer. I don't always get Champagne. Sometimes I just get jolly fizzy wine. But unless you apply your butt to the chair and write you'll never know.
ReplyDeleteOh, I like that analogy, Liz: sometimes you don't get Champagne, sometimes you only get fizzy wine.
ReplyDeleteAnd sometimes you only get fizzy water, and sometimes you just get a drip, drip, drip of tepid water you don't even want to use for your bath.
But you never know until you write it down.
Julie I keep saying it but your posts always seem to hit me at the right time. I'm starting a new project for the THIRD time, because the fizz in my head just isn't translating through my fingers. And I'm feeling a lot of pressure to get this "perfect".
ReplyDeleteSo I'm kind of enjoying the fizzy champagne with a wild look in my eye that says I'm scared shitless, lol!
And in a bit of haha, my verification word is "mucking". As in mucking about, or mucking it up maybe? LOL
Whoa. Deep. But good to hear while I await judgment on my most complicated heroine and plot ever. The fizz I need right now is Alka-Seltzer...
ReplyDeleteBefore I ever tried my hand at writing fiction (high school creative writing class doesn't count) I considered myself more of an artist. That imperfection of transferring idea to paper was incredibly frustrating - even more than writing, I've found, creating a visual piece that looks just like what you saw in your head is nearly impossible. Very early on I came to terms with the notion that perfection was impossible and I had to be happy with "good enough", because otherwise you'd never be happy with anything. At some point you have to call it done and move on, and since, as you pointed out, the person on the other end can never know what you saw in your head, and most of them are incapable of producing such a piece of work themselves anyway, they'll think it's done fabulously and won't see the flaws you see. The mindset has very easily transferred to creative writing; I give my work a couple of passes of edits/revisions, fix the most glaring deficiencies, but then call it done, send it out to my beta/wherever, and move on to the next project.
ReplyDeleteI think you're so right, Julie, and we can only hope to capture the essence of that first fizz of an idea. It might not work the first time, but thank goodness for revision! I can go through a manuscript umpteen times (usually after leaving it for a while so I can see it with fresh eyes), but when I get to the stage where I'm sick of the sight of it, that's when I let it go. If it's not good enough by then, it never will be.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, and absolutely true.
ReplyDeleteThere's a quote I've always liked, but could never figure out who to attribute it to (probably it was a marketing slogan for my power company years ago): "It is impossible to harness the wind, but not to harness its power."
Substitute wind with fizz and there you go.
Julie, I have no idea what you're talking about *looks innocent*
ReplyDeleteBut, wow, what a great post, and what fantastic comments!
I particularly like, "it is impossible to harness the fizz, but not to harness its power." Brilliant, Elizabeth!
Donna, being scared shitless is a good thing. Or so they keep telling me.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry you're beginning your project for the third time. I hope this is the right beginning this time! But one thing I've had to learn about writing longer books (as opposed to category) is that I have a lot less control. My brain isn't big enough to hold it all in, or even to make it all up, not in the first draft anyway. So my first drafts are really pretty rough and sketchy in places, and often need lots of revision just to make them make sense—let alone anywhere near as good as I wanted them to be.
I don't know if that's relevant to you, but I've been thinking about it a lot this week since I'm working on revisions and basically rewriting the first quarter of my novel for the third time. :-)
Kimberly...I *am* deep! "As sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives, dude."
ReplyDelete(PS good luck with your most complicated book ever. I know they'll think it's great.)
ReplyDeleteAmen, Seabrooke. It's good to hear that artists feel the same way as writers (or that is, people feel the same way when they're being artists as they do when they're being writers). I used to draw a lot, and I could never, ever make anything come out the way it looked in my head. Other people might have liked it, but I rarely did, because I felt as if I'd failed my vision. It bothers me less with writing, probably because I feel more confident about writing.
ReplyDeleteThe problem, of course, is when to know when it's "good enough".
...And Christina knows. Yup. That's it. When it makes you wanna puke.
ReplyDeleteI love that quote too, Elizabeth, wherever it comes from. To me, it's a really useful way of thinking. Thank you!
ReplyDelete*looks innocently away from Anna*
ReplyDeleteggg
Fabulous! Exactly what I needed to hear *wanders off to harness the power of the fizz*
ReplyDeleteActually Julie, the article in the latest RWR about discovery made me feel a lot better. A lot of what I've written is what *I* needed to know. The reader doesn't. And what bits of it the reader does, will be filtered in. This way everything moves forward...
ReplyDeleteAnyway you are my guru so big hugs! Are we going to be able to catch up in NY next year?
Thanks for posting this Julie. It's encouraging to know that I'm not the only one this happens to. So often, for me, the fizz becomes a little flat when it's all measured out in complete sentences.
ReplyDeleteBut there's also that other thing that can happen - where things fall into place so well that unexpected ties get drawn and threads get carried through the writing, and magically something really special happens that makes the story richer.
Ah yes, the fizz. Sometimes I sit down and think, "This isn't the book I'd planned on writing." But sometimes I mind and sometimes I don't. I suppose that's down to how fizzy it is.
ReplyDeleteDonna, the point about discovery is such a good one. Though sometimes I feel like I'm writing a whole discovery book...
ReplyDeleteI won't be in NY next year, I don't think, as it clashes with the RNA conference and my usual summer visit to the US. Can't fly to New York, then back to England, then back to Boston in one month! Well, I could, but it would be a bit excessive.
Sofie, you are totally right—we all live for the moment that the story takes on a life of its own through writing it, don't we?
ReplyDeleteLOL, Cat/Kate, good point!
ReplyDeleteI'd love to see the different versions each person is picturing in their minds as they read your work. And the good thing about books is that we individually picture the perfect scenes/characters for those words in our own minds. So at the end, that fizzy wine is Champagne for the readers.
ReplyDelete