As a result, I tended to give my scripts a rather slipshod proofing. That wasn’t disastrous — I tend to turn out a reasonably clean script anyway — but after a number of years I found a way to avoid being confronted with that unpleasant postwriting chore, and it paid unanticipated dividends. So I’ll share it with you.
I proofread the book as I go along. Not a page at a time, certainly, but either a chapter at a time or a day’s work at a time. I perform this little chore either at the end of the day’s work or before beginning work the following day.
The effect of this ongoing proofreading is threefold. First, it keeps me very much in the book, especially if I do the job immediately before beginning the next day’s work. In the course of proofreading, I’m picking up where I left off and getting my mind set for resuming the narrative.
Second, I do a much more thorough job of proofing when I have a molehill to deal with instead of a mountain. I’m able to take the time to notice changes I want to make. I can spot stylistic irregularities and change them then and there.
Third, I’m more comfortable with what I’ve done because those pages stacked to the left of my typewriter are in more finished form. True, I may wind up rewriting the whole damned thing — but that’s immaterial at this stage. As far as I’m concerned while I’m writing, those neatly stacked pages are what the linotype operator is going to set type from.
Another stray word about proofreading, while we’re on the subject. While I’m writing, I tend to xxxxxx out mistyped words and failed phrases. I obliterate these xxxxxx’d out passages with a thick marking pen when I proofread. To expedite matters, I go through the pages once just dealing with the xxxxxx’d out portions; then I can concentrate more deliberately on the actual text when I go through it a second time with a fine-tipped pen.
Seems to me you’re making a pretty broad assumption. You seem to take it for granted that all I have to do is put my body in front of my typewriter and everything will follow. What about the days when my mind’s a blank?
There are a couple of ways to answer that question. For openers, I’d have to say that the most important step I can take to assure that I’ll get work done today is to plant my behind in my desk chair and face the typewriter. While it may not be absolutely true that if you bring the body the mind will follow, the reverse is indisputable; if I don’t show up for work I’m not going to get work done. Period.
When in spite of this my mind doesn’t seem to be doing its job, it usually means one of two things. Either I’m paralyzed by an inability to figure out What Happens Next, or my mental attitude is keeping my fingers off the keys, making me dissatisfied with my sentences even as I try to form them in my mind.
The first problem, being unable to decide What Happens Next, is one that turns out to be projection a good nine-tenths of the time. Most frequently I know what’s going to happen in the five pages I intend to write today; I’m paralyzed because I’m worrying about what’s going to happen tomorrow, or the day after, or sometime in early April.
That way lies madness. The better I’m able to focus only on what I’m going to write today, the better equipped I find myself to do a good job with today’s writing.
And tomorrow generally takes care of itself. Understand, I’m not denigrating the value of true and proper planning. That’s why outlining can be so useful, whether your outline is formal or unwritten. And planning continues to be useful on a day by day basis. I often find myself looking up from a magazine of an evening and letting my mind ruminate upon some plot problem a few days in the book’s future.
But when I’m writing, I do best if I concern myself only with that day’s writing. Because that’s all I’m in a position to deal with at the time. I can no more write tomorrow’s pages today than I can breathe tomorrow’s air today. The fact that I don’t know what I’m going to write tomorrow doesn’t matter much today. I don’t have to know until tomorrow. And, when tomorrow comes, I’ll probably have the answer when I need it. It’ll grow out of what I manage to write today and whatever processes my unconscious mind sets in motion between now and then.
Sometimes, however, I know what’s going to happen next, both today and tomorrow. What stops me in my tracks is that the words just don’t seem to come out right. Nothing seems to work and I begin to have dark suspicions of organic brain damage.
That brings us to our second problem: There are days when all you can do is go to the movies. But there aren’t really very many days like that. What I’ve learned to do on those headful-of-cotton-candy mornings is to sit down and write my daily quota of pages anyway.
I make a bargain with myself. I give myself full permission to decide after the fact that the five pages read as though they were typed by an orangutan. If I hate them the following morning, I can throw them out with a clear conscience. But in the meantime I’m going to sit down and get them written, for better or for worse.
You’d be surprised how often I wind up with five pages of perfectly acceptable copy this way. I may yank a lot of sheets out of the typewriter en route, crumpling them up, hurling them at the wastebasket, and shattering the air with colorful imprecations. But I generally get five pages written that prove to be, if not divinely inspired, nevertheless as good as my prose is apt to get. And, on those genuinely rare occasions when I throw out the five pages on the morning after, I’ve nonetheless gained from the ordeal; the struggle will have jarred something loose, and I can approach with a clear vision the task that had been so impossibly muddled the day before.
Here’s where it’s so important that your daily quota is not too great a burden. For my part, I can always manage to squeeze five pages out of my typewriter. It’s a manageable burden. If I set my goals higher, I might have no trouble fulfilling them on good days, but on bad ones I’d be awed by having to produce ten or twelve pages. So I’d do none at all, and instead of making progress I’d sacrifice momentum.
Now and then a book grinds to a halt not because of projection or muddleheadedness but because something has Gone Wrong. We’ll deal with that in the next chapter.
Chapter 10
Snags, Dead Ends and False Trails
What to do when a wheel comes off
Sometimes a book just plain runs into a wall. It moves merrily along, lulling you into a false sense of security — is there any other kind? — and then a wheel comes off and there you are, knowing only that it’s your fault and that there ought to be something you can do about it.
If I had a magic answer, I would not be writing this book. Not because I’d be unwilling to share such divinely-inspired insight with you. Nothing would give me more pleasure. But I’d be too busy finishing up the dozen or more books of mine that ran into walls over the years, and that have languished unfinished in drawers and cardboard boxes ever since.
I’m not talking about those false starts where I knocked out one or two chapters of a book, then gave it up as a bad job. Those were just ideas I ran up the flagpole; when nobody saluted I hauled ’em down without a second thought. No, I’m talking about books that I stayed with for fifty or a hundred or a hundred fifty pages before something went curiously wrong, with them or with their author, and nothing more ever happened with them.
In some instances, this has happened to me because of my propensity for writing books without having a terribly clear idea where I’m going. I’m sure that if I always worked from a reasonably detailed outline I would run into dead ends far less frequently. On the other hand, my willingness to take a well-realized opening sequence and follow it to see where it leads has enabled me to write several of my most successful novels. If a trunkful of false starts is part of the price I’ve had to pay along the way, I can’t argue that it hasn’t been worth it.