In Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night, the detective Lord Peter Wimsey urges Harriet Vane, a writer of mysteries, to stop writing clockwork whodunits and explore real characters and real emotions in her mysteries. She responds that she could do it, but it would "hurt like hell." He answers: "What difference would that make, if it made a better book?"
You can, of course, as a writer, hide from personal and universal realities as easily as you can as a non-writer. But it's a dangerous business, putting your pen to paper (to paraphrase Bilbo) --- if you're really trying to do it well, there's no knowing where it might lead to.
I'm discovering at the moment, for example, that writing does not allow you to get away with only saying you believe something. Without giving away the interminably dull details of my novel, it's supposed to have an unlikely happy ending driven by, let's say sloppily, love.
Trouble is, I can't envision it; and I have finally figured out that this is because I don't believe sufficiently in the incredible redeeming power of a single act of love. Oh, I want to believe it, which is probably why the novel exists at all, but I don't believe it enough yet to write about it.
But I kind of hope that by writing about it, I'll believe it.
So apparently, writing can demand rigorous integrity of you, force you to admit your failings. It can utterly change you. And yes, it can hurt like hell.
p.s. I really, really wanted to use the tag "Agatha Christie's writing desk" again. Soo...I figured since I was talking about mystery novels...it sort of counts...?
Ah, this was golden! I came to this same conclusion last night - it really hurts... and it takes an enormous part of yourself to "open a vein" and bleed truth onto the paper! As always, thank you so much for sharing your discoveries!
ReplyDeleteBut don't writers almost always write from the perspective of characters who don't believe what the writer believes?
ReplyDeleteHi Eric, this response is extremely late in coming, and I don't know if you'll see it...but that's a tricky question. Probably different for every writer. For me, it's yes and no. My characters almost all are me --- pieces of me, blown up into things I would never in a million years be. That's how they're real to me...because I give them bits of my reality, in a way. But what I was referring to in this post was more, I think, thematic. A plot goes in a certain way, whatever way that is, because you believe the world operates according to certain principles --- whatever you think is LIKELY to happen. And that'a actually pretty different between people, I think. So, trying to navigate a plot toward a happy ending that affirms the reality of love is hard if you don't actually believe that love triumphs. Does that make sense?
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