So, yeah. I spent the day today putting together a bunch of writing I’ve done for the next book. Editors tend to want ‘sample chapters’ but I don’t write that way – putting together a chapter would require writing a whole book.
In the beginning of the project I just write and write and write. Then at some point – internal or external, I don’t know – I start re-reading it all & seeing how or where it fits together, and start providing the bridges between subjects. It’s how Ii was trained as a fiction writer: write that one scene, or one character, or one piece of dialogue, and expand from there. You know, discover the sculpture under the slab of rock, the sculpture that’s already there.
Anyone else work like that? For me it’s like this feeling of letting things coalesce and then congeal. Yes, at some point, I do put the thing in the refrigerator to speed it on its way. But mostly I find book-length projects have their own internal reason that it’s best not to fuck with – but rather to just create a space for and keep it guarded from interruption or wrong paths.
ugh. I hate when I talk about art. Hate it.