On Turning the big wooden crank on my chomping meat-grinder

A strange week, full of anxiety dreams. Because I got stuck. For some reason — well, for many reasons — the new book just ground to a halt.

Some people call this “writer’s block”. But here’s my favourite assessment of that particular condition. It’s from Paul Theroux’s lovingly rigorous essay Chatwin Revisited:

In terms of his writing he was in permanent crisis. Perhaps he had started to write too late in his life, perhaps he lacked confidence. A writer talking to another writer about the difficulty of writing is hardly riveting — you just want to go away. Bruce was at his least interesting bemoaning his writer’s block, and I often felt he was not really bemoaning at all, but rather boasting about the subtlety of his special gift. His implication was that it was so finely tuned it occasionally emitted a high-pitched squeal and seemed to go dead; but no, it was still pulsing like a laser — it had simply drifted a fraction from its target. I had no such story to tell. I was producing a book a year, turning the big wooden crank on my chomping meat-grinder.

Claiming to be “blocked” is just a self-exalting puff, a boast I’d be too embarrassed to make in sentient company. If you find yourself tempted, I’d suggest you try saying this instead:

“I haven’t written anything for a while because I don’t know what to write.”

Or:

“I just don’t have any ideas at the moment.”

Or:

“I’m stuck.”

It might sound less regal, but it’s probably more true.

If you do know what to write, and you’re not writing — well, that’s not writer’s block either. That’s just not writing. Not writing is probably the best way I know of not to get a book written.

So this week I didn’t know what to write, and I lost sleep and I got a little short with the kids. Then I learned for the eightieth time something I’ll perhaps have to learn eighty times more:

When I get stuck, which is what we called it in primary school, it’s for a reason. I might not consciously know the reason — but  somewhere, at some level, part of me does.

Usually, I waste a couple of days before remembering the best solution to this predicament — which is funny, because it’s the same solution as it was last time. And the time before that:

If you can’t go forwards, go back.

So, finally remembering, I returned to chapter one — all the way back to my character wanting a glass of water — and started to revise.

This is psychologically medicinal, like slapping a coat of paint on a recklessly renovated room.  It’s still a mess, but things start looking a bit more dapper. Problems betray themselves,  too — bits of unfinished plumbing, exposed structural weaknesses….vertiginous pits dropping into cold, black infinity.

I haven’t solved all the problems yet — one of them, I’ll write about separately because it’s something that keeps coming up, and I’ve never found a method for dealing with it. But I’ve learned what many of the questions are. And, almost incidentally, a chunk of the new book has been put through a quick second draft.

If I still can’t move forward when all the existing material has been revised, then I’ll go back to the beginning and start revising all over again. If I have to, I’ll keep revising until those first chapters are as good as I can make them.

But it won’t go that far. At some point, I’ll see an opening and push  through it. I’ll keep slogging on until I get stuck again, as surely I will. I’ll lose a few nights’ sleep, maybe get a little snappy with the kids .

Then I’ll learn the same lesson for the eighty-first time.