Making Stories

In Woolf and Grenville's Making Stories: How Ten Australian Novels were Written, Peter Carey said, of writing Oscar & Lucinda: 'When you begin writing you're in a basic state of stupidity because you don't know anything...I suppose people often imagine that the process is much clearer, more calculated.' (Woolf & Grenville 1993:35) and: 'I'm continually losing my way and losing confidence. You have a burst of excitement and think I've got this; then a day later I'm in a mess, nothing's in control, I've lost focus.' (p37) And, when asked about his process: 'Well, I don't know, whatever I say I can always think of ways in which it is not true.' (p37)

I get this completely. My mom used to say that in order to be a good liar, you have to have a good memory. And as a writer, you have to be a good liar - you're making stories - and because of that, it can keep you awake at night (see above, by the way, which is a picture of my bedroom door at about 3.30am. I like to refer to that as the 'insomniac glow'.) Being a writer is, as Carey says, a particular 'state' which is, or can be, hard going. Often it makes you feel inauthentic, submerged in a plot even you don't always believe in. This is what causes the lack of control. This is what causes the sleepless nights.

I am around 26,000 words into this draft, and, being stuck (being in a 'mess', as Carey puts it) and not being certain where I'm going, I started writing another novel. 2,500 words of something completely different, which just flowed out. I hadn't realised how useful - no, essential - this as a practise for me as a writer would be, because what I didn't realise was the I had trapped myself in a room with God's Country, though the door wasn't jammed shut, I just needed to pull it instead of pushing it, and what came to me was the essential backstory, the underpinning of the plot. ie: what exactly happened to make Tony need to leave the Black Country?

What I'm learning about making stories, about this professional lying that I'm doing, is that, yes, you do need a good memory, and you need use it well.