Base Camp Musings
If you never want to know what it feels like to be stuck indefinitely at base camp waiting for the weather to clear so you can climb the mountain of your dreams, then don’t write a novel. Don’t begin with an idea and don’t dream how it might progress or finish. Don’t even imagine your ideal protagonist or scribble a few notes regarding your plot.
That way you won’t have to feel your stomach churning endlessly and your mind numbing before you even complete a sentence. Consider yourself lucky that you now have the time, the brainpower and the freedom of spirit to go and construct a log cabin, train for the Hawaiian triathlon, become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or get married to a supermodel and raise five beautiful children from your castle in the Swiss countryside.
I don’t want you to get the idea that writing a great novel is that most difficult thing you can ever do. That’s just not true. In fact, for the overwhelming majority of accomplished writers, never mind published authors, it is the most difficult thing they tried to do -- and ended up failing.
This isn’t to say it can’t be done. I have to believe this. I know it’s true. Why? For one, because I have read a few novels that are considered classics and thought to myself throughout the reading that I could write something this good, and could have it finished and edited within six months. (A remarkable accomplishment with any real novel exceeding 200 pages (meaning not a Harlequin romance, second-rate paperback mystery, or something of the like).
Unfortunately, that’s simply not the case for most (98%) of the novels I consider great. These works of masterful artistic achievement take years in some cases to mold and fine tune. That’s a lot of time at the base camp before the summit is eventually, ultimately, within reach.
However, against all odds, come what may, no matter the mental anguish, this is my goal. There’s no use deliberating on it any further. I will summon up the wherewithal that’s within me and complete my masterpiece – even if it’s a masterpiece in my mind only –
even if I come to detest it in the years to come – even if it takes three or four other novels before I arrive at an elevated place of creativity that allows me to construct it.
With this drivel out of my mind, I give you an update on my new novel…
Tomorrow…
Or soon.
That way you won’t have to feel your stomach churning endlessly and your mind numbing before you even complete a sentence. Consider yourself lucky that you now have the time, the brainpower and the freedom of spirit to go and construct a log cabin, train for the Hawaiian triathlon, become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or get married to a supermodel and raise five beautiful children from your castle in the Swiss countryside.
I don’t want you to get the idea that writing a great novel is that most difficult thing you can ever do. That’s just not true. In fact, for the overwhelming majority of accomplished writers, never mind published authors, it is the most difficult thing they tried to do -- and ended up failing.
This isn’t to say it can’t be done. I have to believe this. I know it’s true. Why? For one, because I have read a few novels that are considered classics and thought to myself throughout the reading that I could write something this good, and could have it finished and edited within six months. (A remarkable accomplishment with any real novel exceeding 200 pages (meaning not a Harlequin romance, second-rate paperback mystery, or something of the like).
Unfortunately, that’s simply not the case for most (98%) of the novels I consider great. These works of masterful artistic achievement take years in some cases to mold and fine tune. That’s a lot of time at the base camp before the summit is eventually, ultimately, within reach.
However, against all odds, come what may, no matter the mental anguish, this is my goal. There’s no use deliberating on it any further. I will summon up the wherewithal that’s within me and complete my masterpiece – even if it’s a masterpiece in my mind only –
even if I come to detest it in the years to come – even if it takes three or four other novels before I arrive at an elevated place of creativity that allows me to construct it.
With this drivel out of my mind, I give you an update on my new novel…
Tomorrow…
Or soon.
posted by Erich Schmidt | 12:23 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home