As you will know if you've read this blog more than once, there are many idle questions bumbling in and out of my brain, but this is a recurring one (I don't quite know why. Navel-gazing, maybe? Writers are good at that) so I think they deserve a post. Here are a few of my own ideas:
Writing a story is like making a sculpture from a block of stone. You have a mass of ideas in your head, perhaps even on paper in the form of a chaotic first draft. This equates to the rugged block of marble with which Michelangelo stands face to face first thing on a Monday morning. He takes up his chisel; you take up your ballpoint pen. He chips, smooths and twizzles away at the rock until David materializes. You chip, smooth and twizzle away at your lump of words until your story stands revealed in all its splendour.
Writing a story is like embarking on an archaeological dig There are protuberances in the landscape of your mind that make you suspect there's a buried story there. You've even found the odd clue: characters, scenes and conversations have cropped up in your head the way coins, axe-heads and Anglo-Saxon belt-buckles sometimes do in lowly stretches of English farmland. You start digging, sifting and making sense of things. You dream that your story will be the literary equivalent of Sutton Hoo.
Writing a story is like growing a plant Just like a plant, a story needs to be nurtured over time; it can't be forced in the space of a few days. You need to let it take root in your mind and nourish it with lots of thought and reading. As someone who has inadvertently killed many plants and stories in her time, my advice would be to try and tread the thin line between excessive cherishing and vile neglect. A story that just won't come right, and seems to get worse the more you tinker and polish and fret, is as doomed as an over-watered pot of basil. Likewise, the story you can't really be bothered to write will end up friable, parched, moulting and brownish in colour.
Writing a story is like getting to know someone Unless you're lucky enough to experience love at first sight, you and your story will probably start off as polite acquaintances. You might progress to friendship, you might not. You might decide that you really don't like each other and you never want to meet again, in which case you should scan the room for a new narrative plan (ooh yes, what about that one over by the bar, the one that looks like a cross between Mr. Rochester and Sherlock Holmes?) and move on. Once you've made your move and had a few coffees together it is to be hoped that you will fall in love. You may enjoy a calm, happy kind of relationship. You may experience periods of euphoria punctuated by the most appalling quarrels. Just as long as you're in love I'm not sure that it matters.
If anyone else has ways of thinking about what it's like to write a novel, please let me know. It's years since I had a collection (and my Worldwide Stamp Album was a bit of a non-starter anyway, what with my most far-flung correspondent living in Suffolk), so it would be nice to make one now. A Collection of Story Writing Similes. All donations welcome.
