I'm going on tour soon with my new novel Anderson. It is a short tour, but nevertheless I am thrilled by it's prospect. I shall be reading with other people, which I do enjoy, in two of those locations. One of the people I shall be reading with is another Pedlar Press author, Jacob Wren, whose book, Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed is very interesting.
I shall write about all of that a bit more later. But right now, I'm thinking about how I have a new novel out, and yet I am also working on a third one. So, in a way, I have two new novels. I thought that I would write the one I’m working on faster. I was sort of planning to be nearly done at this point. But I'm learning that what I think about such things is unreliable. And in fact, I seem to be better off not thinking about it one way or another. Rather, I ought to just write it, and when it is done, if ever, then I can think about it in other ways.
Because I have been a bit impatient with this book, and I was a bit with Anderson too, I find that I have reiterated it a number of times. My first book, Monkey, I was very patient with, and I let it form itself the way it was, without thinking about how I should go faster to get it done. The impatient relationship to my writing has proven to be unproductive. I hope therefore, that I am abandoning it as an orientation, strategy, or whatever I might think it is. It is not beneficial.
There is a possibility, I haven't ruled out, that I do this sort of thing to myself in order to trick myself, to pretend the value of a certain abstract relationship to production is worth committing to, only to discover that it isn't working, and thus serving to make me revalue the process that was challenged by this abstract relation. Such an elaborate ruse seems a bit absurd, but it could be part of an over all (crazy) purpose. Whatever the reason, I have discovered yet again that impatience with my work is pointless, and surrender to my natural process is rewarding.
I've been working on the new piece since November 2008, which is about when I handed in my manuscript for Anderson. I was intensely into writing this new piece, and I wrote about 60,000 words, and then I started rewriting it. I was playing with a different method for writing also. I usually go forward with a piece. I start here and I go there. Then I go back over it a number of times, adding, subtracting, refining. But with this one, I deliberately wrote in a fragmented manner. So that the pieces could be put together afterwards. This was interesting. But it has turned out to be rather unsatisfactory. Now I have assembled all of the bits and pieces and gone over it and cut it all down to about 35,000 words. I have changed that bit 3 or 4 times, trying to find the best way to tell it. And now I am back to my natural method. Now I know I have it, the relationship to making it that works with it, and I am rolling it out in a forward movement like music.
Symphonies can be written in different ways, with different sections being composed at different times, and reassembled in an order separate from when they were written. Film and TV, of course, are also usually produced this way. But musicians who improvise have this way of going forward in their composition that I relate to as a writer, who was at one time also a musician.
Anyway, I just did an interview for a radio program (Mouth to Mouth) in Vancouver, and also for the Toronto Quarterly, and it’s got me thinking about my process.
