Obsession

How long does it take to write a novel? How long does it take to construct a book? How long does it take to turn a single idea into a collection of themes and characters? The book I’m currently grappling with was started in late March and whilst it’s very nearly there, it’s not quite made it over the finish line as yet.

For some, however, it would appear the effort is significantly less.

The popular American thriller writer (can you tell how restrained I’m being here?) James Patterson writes up to eight books a year. Or roughly one every six and a half weeks, presupposing he writes all the time and never takes a holiday. Which is unlikely for a millionaire. Not only is that an incredible feat to come up with all of those words, but it seems an impossible number of ideas to conjure up.

Doesn’t it?

Of course Patterson has help. Quite blatant help, to be fair.

He has an extensive team of co-writers or assistants who receive a (very small) cover credit, but as they all sign confidentially agreements there is no way of knowing how much involvement Patterson really has. I’ve never read a Patterson book, let alone several, so I have no way of knowing whether they have a consistent sense of voice that tells the reader that they are reading a James Patterson novel. Or, I suppose, if they do have a consistent voice – how easy that voice would be to imitate?

(Mind you taking your time over a novel isn’t necessarily an indication of quality. Dan Brown has spent six years crafting The Da-Vinci Code’s sequel. It finally comes out today and is called, God I can’t remember – The Populalist Riddle Behind Some Not-that-Obscure Society I Once Read About In Another Book Written By A Less Well Marketed Writer. Or something like that anyway. Hopefully, six years will have enabled Brown to raise the quality of his prose above the magnificently emotionally wrought “The famous man starred at the red cup.”)

I find the idea of collaborative writing unusual. Aside from the arguable lack of credit for probably doing the majority of the work on the co-writer’s side, I am surprised at Patterson’s willingness to release control of his words. It’s his name at the top; doesn’t he want everything between the covers to be his too?

I think the closest I’ve ever gotten to this collaborative writing is having my work analysed by other writers – the workshopping process – which can become addictive. It can reinforce that you’re doing the right thing, that somebody out there likes your writing, but it’s taken me a little while to be comfortable with not being able to please everyone. Some people, will most definitely not like my writing. Okay, so if everyone has the same problem with the same part, then it probably needs looking at, but otherwise - if someone’s questioning a phrase, or style, or the believability of a character and I, the writer, am totally committed to that section, then I should probably stick with it until it rights itself. We are not, surprisingly enough, writing by committee.

You see, the thing about most writers is we’re normally complete control freaks. We tend to be a bit, at the very least, obsessive.

True collaborative processes are exciting and interesting – the communication between director and actor; the symphony of the band; even the near factory approach to some forms of visual art. Andy Warhol, Damian Hirst, Jeff Koons have all employed legions of assistants to actually produce the art from their ideas. In many ways I can kind of see the sense in devolving the actual task of painting dozens of brightly colour dots on the side any given immovable object as it must quickly become pretty damn dull once you’ve had the idea in the first place. There’d be that brief eureka moment of “yes, a boat/horse/barn/tank/bank/etc, etc” but then after you’d painted thirty-six identical splodges, surely you’d be distracted, bored and thinking about what to have for tea. The glamour’s kind of gone before you’re halfway through.

There is, admittedly, an argument for the actual creative process of doing; of constructing something out of nothing; of the physical weary joy of labour intensive work that must be lost when you delegate downwards, but it would be laughable to assume that Philippe Ramette could ever produce his work alone.

But anyway, back to writers. I think in many ways writing, as in fiction prose writing, is often seen as the most direct form creative communication. It isn’t performed by an actor. It hasn’t been bent into the right shape and contextualised by its surrounding environment. It is just words on a page. Words straight out of the mind, through the fingers and onto the page and nothing else.

Probably, extensively redrafted, ripped apart and put back together before anyone’s seen it, but still – I said a perception, not necessarily an actuality (and I’d be prepared to argue several dozens exceptions from all manner of other creative mediums which prove the above statement to be complete and utter rubbish, but I’m rambling now).

So, yeah, virtually everyone I know who writes admits to being very controlling.
One of the most perfect examples of this would be Nabokov (not that I knew him, obviously).

Upon granting an interview for the Paris Review, he asked for the questions to be sent out in advance. When the interviewer arrived he found a package waiting for him containing not only the completed answers to the questions, but also the bits of banter between interviewer and interviewee. Nabokov had written the whole damn thing. He claimed that this was because of concerns that, as English wasn’t his first language, he might misrepresent himself.

That, in itself, sounds controlling enough, but then when you consider that Nabokov was arguably one of the finest manipulators and impressional stylists of the English language ever it’s starting to drift into the realms of mentally unstable. Go read the first page of Lolita if you don’t believe me. That whole opening passage is, essentially, the deconstruction of the word Lolita until it becomes a pure force of repressed forbidden repulsed sexual desire. The ability to manipulate language (even if not your mother tongue) to such a degree cannot mean that the author is worried about a slip in an interview. Can you imagine James Patterson trying to explain that level of linguistic trickery to one of his assistants?

“So when the butch maverick cop hero finds the dame’s body,” (I’m just guessing here, but I suspect they’re the sort of books that include butch maverick cops and dames being murdered) “I want him to stare into her glassy tear torn eyes, lose himself in that swirl of loss, reciting her name again and again until it becomes a whisper of the murder’s hidden past.”

“Sure thing, boss, but what is the dame’s name?”

“Details, details. I come up with the ideas. You’re supposed to handle the details.”
Sigh.

You see, control?

Some of us embrace the self-control side, some of us try to rebel against the instinct.

‘But I think everyone’s got to be on something when they’re creating,’ a friend of mine recently half-joked over a glass of wine.

I don’t know about that. It may surprise you to know that I, certainly, can’t be.

Now, I realise I may have a reputation for liking a drink every so often, but I can’t write after a drink. Oh, sure, I sit with a notebook and do broad scope stuff; think about themes and character’s histories and ideas and narrative arcs and sometimes I scribble down random lines of dialogue which feel great, but the morning look rubbish. So, when I’m actually trying to get the text to say something, for it to operate on more than a linear level, for it (hopefully) make the reader think beyond the immediate – then I have to be stone cold sober. I have to be in complete control.

But does this leading to levels of obsessive compulsiveness in the rest of my life?
Sure, but you’ll have to come back to find out what. I have some egg cups to arrange.