Preemptive Retaliation

So I think that, this year, I have read more books than I have since I was nine. Back then there was a competition or something, some national reading month, where you were challenged to read as many books as possible. I remember I totalled up about thirty books in the month, most of them Goosebumps books I had already worn down the covers on. It wasn’t the most in the class but it was a stunning achievement for a nine year old. Almost an entire book a day! Some people thought I faked it, but really it was just a good barometer for my social standing at nine years old.

Needless to say, it’s a high watermark that I haven’t managed to top since. But, still, I’ve read fifteen books this year, which is a lot for me.

Recently I’ve been occupied by 4, 3, 2, 1 by Paul Auster. I’m not going to go into detail about Auster’s work, other than he’s one of my favourite writers and is truly a writer’s writer, but I found myself affected by this book in a peculiar way.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been working on a novel about AI, specifically AI art and human art and how the two mix. I started this novel not long after finishing Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro this year, and I would be lying if I didn’t highlight that the narrative takes a lot of cues from that book. Not that it’s about the same things or the same characters, just in that the narrative interrupts itself with different stories that give context to the stories that are currently being told. For example; the narrator is walking through the park and they see a dog playing fetch, and this causes them to reminisce on when a dog appeared at their school and the chaos that was involved, and the culmination of that story gives context to how they feel in the current narrative (they love dogs because they give the affection that parents don’t know how to, they fear dogs due an errant bite during play, they are wary due to a possible allergic reaction) and when I write this out loud it feels silly because surely all writing is like that? But it’s not, and there’s a way that Ishiguro does it that feels so natural and effortless. And it was a small revelation of mine when I realised that that’s how I talk a lot of the time. When telling someone a story I try to load the context up front, to give a run down, to let people in on the inside joke so that, when the punchline is delivered, they can experience it the same way I did. This leads to a lot of build-up, a lot of scene setting before we get into the story. And this is only when I’ve thought ahead. If I’m already in the story, or so swept away by what I want to say that I go for it without thought, I interrupt myself. I pause the story, put it on hold, and start a tangent that whirls out into its own story – and god help you if that story needs extra context to make sense, and god help you if I’m drunk when telling this story, and god help you anyway, at the best of times.

Anyway – Ishiguro’s narrative style really, really helped me with the narrative style of my book. I found a steady, solid voice that I could tell a story from. A non-linear, storytelling voice that worked back and forth between different points. So I began writing my latest novel, starting with a few sample chapters to test if it could crawl, half a notebook worth of notes to see if it could walk, and then (currently) seven chapters as it learns to run.

Between now and then I have read seven books, and with each book I’m gripped with a strange, abstract fear. You see, (interjection incoming), I don’t really remember much of the books I’ve read. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez is an incredible book, but when Anna read it earlier this year and tried to talk to me about it, I found I couldn’t remember anything about it. I remembered some details, and some more when prompted, but I couldn’t remember most of the book. I remember the vibes though. I remember not quite how I felt, but how I felt after. I remember how it affected me, how it changed me, and how afterwards I was a different person.

So with each of these seven books I’m anticipating a change. There’ll be something in them that I think is revolutionary, or genius, or funny, and I’ll take that on and try to adapt that it my own writing. And I’m worried because this isn’t a conscious decision of mine (I don’t actively set out to emulate other writer’s work, I just do it because that’s how writing is supposed to work) and I’m worried because I might pick up something bad – or, not bad, but detrimental to what I’m working on, that’ll conflict with the voice that I’m so happy with. Because I worked with that voice, I liked that when I made my sample chapters, and it works so well with what I’m trying to achieve.

And, again, writing that out loud makes it sound so stupid, because evolution is going to be positive, even if it takes me away from what I liked in the first place. This is what writing is, this is how it’s supposed to be.

The problem I’m wrestling with is that 4, 3, 2, 1 is far too long for it’s own good. The story and the writing are both so engaging and interesting, and I found myself lingering for page after page when I should have been sleeping, but it goes on for too long. The narrative is filled with long, meandering anecdotes, with extra context given for each point, and it’s a lot but the prose is so lyrical and strong that it’s impossible not to be swept along by it, even when those stories peter off to nowhere and end up being stories just for the sake of being stories. But it’s too long. At the halfway point I found myself begging for the story to end, or at least speed up a tad (partly as I was heading on holiday soon and didn’t want to lug that 1000+ pages around an airport).

And now that I’ve read the book, or I guess since I really got into it, I’ve noticed that my narrative has become a long, meandering story. I introduce a character or an idea and begin to flesh them out, and as I’m writing I begin to luxuriate in it, I think to myself “why be succinct? why not let the subject really breathe, get a good lungful of air?” and I keep going and going and going, and in the end I have something that is not at all tight, not efficient, but has a lot of character in it.

If I’m being pragmatic, there’s a danger there. There’s a danger in entertaining myself for that long on something, for enjoying the sensation of my fingers bouncing against keys more than readers will enjoy the subject. Kill your darlings etc, but it’s a hard lesson to learn. I mean here I am, two hours past my bed time and still typing away because I have more thoughts and feelings on this topic that I want to share to the void, because I wanted to give more context, because I wanted to share the bigger picture that wasn’t wholly needed.

I’m not done reading for the year. I think I’ll hit twenty, maybe twenty three before the years ends (now I feel like twenty four, just so I can say two books a month). I wonder how the rest of them will change what I’m writing? I wonder how many of them for the good (Never Let Me Go, Fragile Animals, Klara and the Sun) vs the bad (4, 3, 2, 1, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Ancillary Justice) (not that these books are bad etc). I wonder how much of my novel will actually be my novel, compared to the others that I have read and been influenced by. That’s something I wonder about a lot, actually. But that’s a question for another time.