The Long Road To A First Novel

THE WRITING SERIES

A personal account of the years spent living with two manuscripts, discovering that the journey of writing transforms the author as profoundly as the work itself.

People occasionally ask how long it took me to write my first books. The question appears straightforward enough, and I usually offer the sort of answer social convention expects. A couple of years, I say, which is factually accurate in much the same way that saying a tree took fifty years to grow ignores the rather important contribution of sunlight, rain and an astonishing amount of patience. Books have a habit of beginning long before their authors become aware of them. By the time the first sentence finally appears on a blank page, the story has often been travelling quietly through one's life for years, collecting fragments, observations, conversations and emotions with the unhurried confidence of something that knows it will eventually arrive.

When I began writing The Bachelor of Bellati and A Song for Eresha, I imagined they would occupy separate corners of my life. One was a memoir rooted in memory, observation and lived experience. The other was a novel demanding the invention of an entirely new world with its own people, relationships and emotional truths. They appeared to require different instincts. One asked me to remember. The other asked me to imagine. It took surprisingly little time to discover that the distinction was largely imaginary. Memory has always been more inventive than it admits, and fiction has a curious tendency to borrow quietly from life without asking permission.

The two manuscripts soon began sharing the same desk, the same mornings and, occasionally, the same anxieties. There were days when I would spend several hours trying to remember the precise rhythm of a conversation that had taken place years earlier, only to discover the following morning that an entirely fictional character had begun speaking with unexpected clarity. On other days I would become so immersed in the emotional lives of imagined people that a forgotten incident from my own past would quietly return, offering itself with a generosity that had been entirely absent when I had gone looking for it. The memoir and the novel appeared to have entered into a private arrangement from which I was politely excluded.

Writing two books simultaneously also revealed something I had never fully appreciated before. Every manuscript teaches the author how to write itself, and every lesson arrives only after one has become thoroughly convinced of knowing what one is doing. The confidence with which I began each project lasted approximately long enough to complete a respectable opening chapter. Thereafter the books assumed control with remarkable efficiency. They rejected scenes that seemed perfectly sensible in outline, insisted upon conversations I had not anticipated and occasionally led me towards conclusions that appeared entirely obvious only after they had been written. One begins believing oneself to be the architect. Gradually it becomes apparent that one has accepted employment as the site supervisor.

There is a widespread belief that writers spend their days waiting for inspiration. It is an attractive idea, largely because it sounds considerably more romantic than the truth. Inspiration certainly visits from time to time, although it displays an unfortunate disregard for ordinary working hours and a complete indifference to deadlines. The greater part of writing consists of returning to the same chair each day regardless of whether inspiration has chosen to accompany you. Some mornings the sentences arrive with reassuring confidence. Others behave like reluctant schoolchildren being escorted unwillingly towards a mathematics examination. One develops a deep respect for persistence because it remains available on days when talent has apparently taken leave.

The curious thing about working on two books together was that discouragement in one manuscript often became the solution for the other. A chapter refusing to cooperate in the memoir would quietly persuade me to spend the afternoon with the novel instead. An especially obstinate scene in the novel would send me back to the memoir where memory, for all its occasional unreliability, at least provided the comfort of knowing that the events had already happened. Looking back, I realise that each book became a refuge from the other. Neither allowed me sufficient time to become entirely despondent.

People sometimes imagine that writing progresses in a reassuringly linear fashion. One writes Chapter One, followed shortly thereafter by Chapter Two, and continues in this orderly manner until the acknowledgements politely announce that everyone may now return home. My own experience bore little resemblance to this admirable efficiency. Entire chapters would remain untouched for weeks while a scene near the end insisted upon immediate attention. Characters introduced almost casually in an early draft would gradually acquire unexpected significance, while others, upon whom I had initially placed considerable confidence, quietly departed with scarcely a farewell. The books possessed a better understanding of their own architecture than I did. My responsibility lay less in controlling them than in recognising where they wished to go.

This gradual surrender may be one of writing's least discussed pleasures. We spend much of life attempting to organise, predict and manage outcomes, only to discover that stories have very little interest in such arrangements. They proceed according to emotional logic rather than administrative convenience. A conversation that appears insignificant suddenly becomes indispensable. A carefully planned subplot evaporates because it no longer belongs. A single sentence written almost absent-mindedly turns out months later to contain the emotional centre of the entire book. The work acquires a quiet intelligence of its own, and the writer's task becomes one of listening more carefully than speaking.

There were moments, naturally, when I wondered whether either manuscript would ever reach completion. Every long project eventually arrives at a point where the destination becomes obscured by the sheer accumulation of unfinished pages. Progress begins to resemble excavation rather than creation. One spends the morning moving paragraphs from one chapter to another, the afternoon deleting half of what seemed excellent the previous evening, and concludes the day with the faint suspicion that literature might have advanced rather more rapidly had one taken up gardening instead. Plants, in my limited experience, rarely object to being watered in quite the same manner that manuscripts object to being edited.

Yet even during those uncertain periods, something continued to draw me back. It was not discipline alone, although discipline undoubtedly played its part. It was the growing conviction that these books had quietly become companions. They occupied my thoughts during walks, interrupted unrelated conversations with inconvenient ideas and occasionally presented solutions while I was making tea, which suggests that kettles deserve greater recognition in discussions about the creative process. Living with a manuscript for several years means that its characters cease to visit occasionally and begin paying rent. They accompany ordinary days with surprising persistence until one almost forgets they are fictional.

Looking back now, I realise that the most valuable lesson those years offered had remarkably little to do with writing technique. It concerned patience. Modern life encourages the comforting illusion that worthwhile things ought to happen quickly. We have grown accustomed to immediate replies, instant deliveries and the peculiar expectation that every ambition should arrive accompanied by a tracking number. Books observe a different calendar. They mature at a pace entirely indifferent to our schedules, refusing to be hurried simply because their author has become impatient. That truth was initially frustrating. It gradually became liberating.

Patience, I eventually discovered, is not simply the willingness to wait. It is the willingness to continue working while waiting, often without any assurance that the work will ever find its readers. Every writer begins with an audience consisting almost entirely of oneself. The manuscript exists in a curious state of privacy. It occupies the desk, the mind and an unreasonable proportion of one's waking hours, yet remains invisible to everyone else. Friends ask how the book is progressing and one answers with carefully rehearsed optimism, omitting the rather important detail that Chapter Nine has spent the previous fortnight arguing with Chapter Ten over matters neither appears inclined to explain.

There comes a stage in every long manuscript when familiarity becomes the greatest obstacle to clarity. After reading the same pages dozens of times, one ceases to notice individual sentences altogether. Entire chapters pass before the eye with the comfortable familiarity of roads travelled every morning. It becomes impossible to determine whether a scene possesses genuine emotional force or merely benefits from having occupied one's imagination for so long. The writer begins studying the reactions of early readers with an intensity that would be faintly alarming in most other professions. A raised eyebrow acquires significance. A thoughtful silence after finishing a chapter becomes an object of prolonged analysis. One gradually accepts that every manuscript must eventually leave the closed circuit of its creator's imagination if it is ever to become a living work.

Revision is where writing quietly sheds its mythology. First drafts enjoy an undeserved reputation for magic, as though novels arrive complete and merely require someone fortunate enough to type quickly. My experience suggested something considerably less glamorous. The first draft simply proves that the book exists. Everything worthwhile happens afterwards. Every page begins asking difficult questions. Every chapter must justify its place. Entire scenes disappear because they no longer serve the story, despite having required several exhausting days to write. One develops an increasing willingness to part company with sentences admired for their elegance once it becomes apparent that elegance alone is a poor substitute for purpose. It is an education in humility disguised as editing.

Working simultaneously on a memoir and a novel revealed another distinction that I had never previously considered. The memoir asked whether I was remembering honestly. The novel asked whether I was imagining honestly. At first they appeared to demand entirely different forms of discipline. Gradually the difference became less obvious. Readers possess an extraordinary instinct for emotional truth. They may forgive improbable events, unlikely coincidences and the occasional narrative indulgence, but they rarely forgive characters who behave according to the convenience of the author rather than the complexity of human nature. Whether the people on the page once existed or were born entirely within the imagination becomes almost irrelevant. Their emotional lives must convince us. Everything else follows from that.

Memory, for its part, proved both generous and infuriating. Certain episodes returned with astonishing precision, complete with the texture of a room, the rhythm of a conversation and the quality of afternoon light falling across a window. Others resisted every attempt at retrieval. The harder I pursued them, the further they appeared to retreat. Eventually I stopped searching quite so aggressively. Curiously enough, many returned of their own accord weeks later while I was occupied with entirely unrelated matters. Memory appears to dislike interrogation. It responds much more favourably to quiet company.

Fiction behaved differently. It demanded faith. One spends months concerning oneself with people who have never existed, worrying about decisions they have not yet made and feeling unexpectedly relieved when an imagined conversation finally finds the right ending. Described aloud, the entire enterprise sounds faintly ridiculous, which is perhaps why writers tend not to discuss it at dinner parties. Yet somewhere during those years Eresha and Anvesha ceased to feel invented. They acquired the quiet familiarity of people whose company had become part of everyday life. Their world occupied long walks, interrupted unrelated thoughts and occasionally solved narrative problems while I was making tea, which suggests that kettles deserve rather greater recognition in discussions about the creative process.

Completion arrived far more quietly than I had anticipated. There was no dramatic moment of triumph, no overwhelming sense that a mountain had finally been climbed. Instead there was an unexpected stillness. For several years these books had accompanied almost every ordinary day. They had occupied early mornings, interrupted evenings and quietly followed me through journeys, conversations and solitary walks. Finishing them felt rather like watching old neighbours move away after many years. One is pleased to see them begin the next chapter of their lives, yet faintly surprised by the silence they leave behind.

Perhaps the most difficult lesson comes immediately afterwards. Every manuscript eventually reaches the point at which it no longer belongs entirely to its author. It must leave the study and begin its own conversation with strangers. Readers discover meanings never consciously intended. They linger over passages one scarcely remembers writing and pass quickly over others upon which one expended heroic quantities of effort. Some recognise themselves in unexpected places. Others arrive at conclusions entirely different from those the author anticipated. That, I gradually came to understand, is not a failure of communication. It is the completion of literature itself. A book is never finished when the writer places the final full stop upon the page. It is finished only when another reader begins carrying it through the landscape of their own life.

The years spent writing these two books have become inseparable from the person they quietly shaped. One taught me to look inwards with greater honesty. The other required me to imagine lives entirely beyond my own. Together they dismantled the comfortable illusion that writing is principally an act of expression. It is equally an act of listening. One listens to memory, to imagined voices, to moments that appear insignificant when they occur and reveal their importance only much later. Above all, one listens to the manuscript itself, which usually understands what it wishes to become several months before its author does.

People still ask how long it took to write my first books, and I continue offering the convenient answer because conversations generally benefit from brevity. The fuller answer is rather different. If one begins counting from the first sentence, perhaps a couple of years. If one begins with the experiences, observations, conversations, failures and quiet moments that gradually accumulated until those first sentences became possible, then considerably longer. Stories seldom begin where we imagine they do. They spend years gathering themselves within ordinary lives before finally announcing their presence with the deceptive simplicity of a blank page waiting for its first line.