I’m working on a novel right now. I think this is the first time I’ve acknowledged that in words, because I can’t stand people who endlessly proclaim that they’re “writing a novel” instead of actually getting to work and, y’know, doing it.
I’ve never really written “long” before. I’ve certainly written pieces in the thousands of words, many pieces, but stepping into the tens of thousands, the challenge takes on a new shape. When you’re writing short, the challenge, at the core level, is to work language into an attractive form: to choose the right words to express the right sentiment. When you’re writing long, the challenge is to construct a foundation malleable enough to support literary flourish, but stable enough to hold a cohesive narrative. A different part of your brain gets a workout.
Dunbar’s Number refers to the prime size of a cohesive social group – after a group balloons to above, say, 150 people, the theory is that ties break down because we hit a cognitive wall that limits how many people we can keep tabs on. Lately, I’ve been considering the idea of a Writerly Dunbar: the number of words a writer can hit before they find it cognitively impossible to keep tabs on their narrative. Mine seems to be around 15,000. After I hit 15,000 words, it’s almost impossible for me to contain what I’ve already written inside my head – I forget scenes and find myself needing to skim over the entire work in order to get a handle on how to push forward. After leaving the work for a few days, it’s almost impossible for me to simply pick up where I left off.
I also find it requires a heroic degree of confidence to push on past the Writerly Dunbar. The first 15,000 words serves as the foundation for the rest of the work, so it’s tempting to feel as though it would be foolish to push on until those 15,000 words are absolutely perfect. This, of course, is paralysing: the first 15,000 words will never be perfect, and in any case, a perfect 15,000 word opener is worth infinitely less than an average novel that’s been written to completion.
I don’t really have the solution, yet, though I’d be interested to see what works for others. For my part, I’ve found using Scrivener works pretty well. Another strategy I’m testing out (which I’m sure isn’t particularly original) is to write a chapter, then compress that chapter down into a very short synopsis, then shelve away the ‘full’ draft chapter and only refer to the synopsis when pushing forward. I like this, because it’s kind of a hack: my mind can’t cope with more than 15,000 words at a time, so in compressing the preceding narrative down to its essence, I only have to keep track of the hundred-or-so word synopsis of what’s gone before. It also means I’m prevented from wasting all my time revising the opening chapters: as soon as those chapters are shelved away, I can only return to them after I’ve finished the entire work.
Another fairly basic strategy is to time-track my work. If I place value on how many words I’ve written, instead of how good those words are, the goal becomes simply to push the word count up. Instead of ending a day worrying about whether the section I’ve worked on is any good (which is subjective, so not worth worrying about), I can focus on an objective measure of success: getting another thousand words down. Of course, the temptation is to ‘cheat’ and write down absolute garbage (which is a criticism heaped at a lot of work produced for Nanowrimo), so it’s probably useful to pair that with another strategy: handing the work off to a trusted reader (or ‘beta tester’) who can return their judgement. Although the value of any piece of writing is subjective, having multiple readers return their own subjective judgements is a good way to get a handle on whether your work is up to snuff.
On that note, I’m not sure why it’s not said more often, but it’s totally nuts to attempt to judge the merit of your work while you’re writing it. If you look at the behaviour of other writers, you can see why: some of our most esteemed writers (Kafka, Woolf, Plath) spent their lives in perpetual funks, worrying that their work (which is now regarded as canonical) was garbage. Conversely, delusions of brilliance seem to plague most terrible writers, who have never shared their work, and so have never been told their ‘masterpiece’ is hackneyed, derivative, boring, unrealistic, or incomprehensible. It’s pointless trying to read your own work from the positioned of the disinterested critic. Having a few honest readers flick through your work-in-progress is, I think, the only way to stay grounded and ensure you’re not writing shit, while also ensuring you don’t lapse into endless and debilitating self-criticism (or self-congratulation, which could be worse). It’s easy to find an honest reader: they’re the reader who tells you that some parts of your work are rubbish. You need a reader who alternatively believes some of your work is good, and some isn’t – and isn’t afraid to tell you which is which.
If you’re working on something long-form, what are your strategies? What’s your Writerly Dunbar (or is my entirely theory hokum)? How do you cognitively contain your narrative, and how do you convince yourself to push forward? (You can reply to me on Twitter – @mrconnorobrien and I’ll add any interesting responses below).
Comments and updates:
Some great writing advice from Elizabeth Soutter Schwarzer via Dave Caolo (I’ve picked my favourite four points):
- No one wants to read about you.
- They want to read about themselves.
- Keep it very organized. It [long-form creative writing] is more like a college paper than you think it is.
- Nobody does it naturally.