The Desert
“What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well…”This is a quote from one of my favorite books, The Little Prince. It's one of those books that I read and re-read, and each time, I glean a little more wisdom. If you haven't read it since childhood, I highly recommend it.
And this one quote, to me, describes the writing process. I was recently explaining to someone the phenomenon of hating the middle of your book. It really does feel like wandering around in a desert with no landmarks, nothing but sand, no water.
"What do you do when you hate the middle?" this person asked me.
I keep going. Just like deciding to stop in the middle of the desert and just sit down . . . is suicide, so it is with writing. You've got to keep going.
And it's with the hope of a well, of an oasis. And it's with the idea that if it all comes together the way you picture it in your head, then you'll look back on the desert time fondly. You'll remember how hard it was, and that will make it all the more quenching and wonderful when the book really IS good. The desert landscape that once was so horrible will now be beautiful to you.
I have my desert days. I have days at the well.
How about you?
Labels: inspiration
posted by Erica Orloff at 7:19 AM
14 Comments:
I love that! My desert is the end. I love the middle, but the end makes me crazy. The middle reminds me of a sonata development where you keep pulling out motifs from the beginning and playing with them, turning them upside down or backwards. (And sometimes inserting them in the beginning when they're not there.) It's where I massage the beginning and end for pieces and threads, pulling them up so the story comes alive.
The end feels like grunt work. It takes forever, and when I'm done, I feel ... weird.
Hi Spy:
I always love the end--like riding downhill on my bike with my hands off the handlebars--I see the end in sight and it's exciting!
:-)
E
I'm somewhere in between the two of you. I like seeing the end in sight and racing toward it, but like Spy, it often makes me feel...weird. Either incomplete, like I stopped in the wrong place, or lost, like I shut the door on people I'll miss.
When my middle becomes a desert, I usually leave 'em there in the hot sun to roast for a while until the characters scream at me and tell me their version of an oasis. =)
Erica, I really must reread that book! Thanks for the reminder. And my favorite part is when I'm going downhill, and the end is in sight. Stopping in the desert is suicide, you're so right. I did that once, and learned my lesson. I have a story I loved very much, but lingered in the desert too long. Okay, I'd sold my first book, and was busy with those edits. I know when I go back to this story, I'll have to start at the beginning again and just pray the characters come back to join me. I've never lingered in the desert again, so I know it was a valuable lesson.
Erica, I'll have to read Little Prince again. It's been too long.
The middle was always a desert for me -- until my last book. I think it's because of the "raise the stakes" note I have on my monitor. As I wrote, I consciously and subconsciously thought "how can I torment these people."
I hope that easier-than-usual middle wasn't the exception and it will happen again with my wip.
Lainey:
So you fry them into submission.
E
ladonna:
That's the danger. Never finishing.
E
edie:
You've obviously come across a process break-through for yourself. That's great!
E
I have found that, for me, it only seems like the desert when I am forcing the story. If I let go and listen to the characters tell their story then it flows like the Niagra River :)
I have never read The Little Prince... I have read The Prince by Machiavelli. However, I do not think that they are anywhere near each other in content or message.
Maybe it is time to add another book to the to-be-read pile next to the bed :)
ewoh:
You won't regret reading it. It's such a treasure.
E
He stood there looking across the desert. So quiet. Low hum of the wind in the wires. High bloodweeds along the road. Wiregrass and sacahuista. Beyond in the stone arroyos the tracks of dragons. The raw rock mountains shadowed in the late sun and to the east the shimmering abscissa of the desert plains under a sky where raincurtains hung dark as soot all along the quadrant. That god lives in silence who has scoured the following land with salt and ash. He walked back to the cruiser and got in and pulled away.
--Cormac McCarthy, from No Country for Old Men
I can always find joy in the words of others, even when my own fail me.
I will have to make an effort to read The Little Prince. It sounds like my sort of book - full of subtle messages.
Certainly some days are spent in the desert but I know the well is out there somewhere and that gets me through, whatever the circumstance.
Jude:
Just beautiful.
E
Suzanne:
I really think you'd like it.
E
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