Salvador Dalí understood the trials and tribulations of the life of an artist. That’s why I’ve got him perched on my desk, in miniature form.
I mention the little man with the funny mustache because he reminds me to laugh at life, in all its absurdity. Like, say, when you get into a car crash with an ice-cream truck, as I did yesterday on my way to work.
We’ll come back to that thought in a minute. (The life of the artist, I mean, not the ice-cream truck.)
You see, the only down-side to posting my status updates on my novel is that people who saw a week ago that I was 69% done are now saying, “Hey, I guess you must be finished with your novel now!”
Well… not quite.
You see, although I may come to my desk every day ready to work, I may not actually get any further with my word count. I may put a few words on the page that have nothing to do with my novel. I may not have any useful ideas come to me. I may end up writing something for a post at Black Heart or Shoestring Austin instead. Or I may just feel like reading, rather than writing.
Writing a novel isn’t like writing a piece for a magazine or newspaper, or a PR piece for a client. With those types of work, you know when you’re done. You have a certain number of words, and a deadline, and you write until you reach one or both. Novels, however, are tricky beasts. For one thing, they’re obviously far longer in terms of word count. And although I am technically striving for 50,000 words, this may increase or decrease given the nature of the finished story itself.
This flexibility makes writing a novel both freeing and difficult. As my man, Dalí, once observed:
You know the worst thing is freedom. Freedom of any kind is the worst for creativity. You know, Dalí spent two months in jail in Spain, and these two months were the most enjoyable and happy in my life. Before my jail period, I was always nervous, anxious. I didn’t know if I should make a drawing, or perhaps make a poem, or go to the movies or the theatre, or catch a girl, or play with the boys. The people put me in jail, and my life became divine. Tremendous!
While I certainly wouldn’t want to be *actually* imprisoned for any reason, I can totally understand what Dalí meant. When you have nothing but time on your hands, you will rush to fill that space with any and all distractions. You can blame Facebook and Twitter but, really, it’s human nature to feel pulled in this way. When you are rigorously scheduled—whether by work, school or prison guards—you will concentrate your efforts to make your suddenly very precious free time count. Even my old writing buddies, the WePWoP’ers, see the value of that (check out Zakk’s excellent post on “The Haruki Murakami Experiment”).
So yes, I’m still working on my novel. No, it’s not finished yet. Yes, I’m okay with that. Yes, it will eventually be done. No, I can’t give you an ETA on that. That’s just the nature of the work.
Ah, freedom—wonderful, terrible freedom!
P.S. Watch out for those ice-cream trucks.
If you’re anything like me, you hate feeling chained to your desk, particularly on gorgeous sunny days. Living in Austin, Texas, where there are approximately 300 sunny days per year, I’m even more motivated by the prospect of sunbathing in my free time, or simply getting out to the park with a good book or a frisbee. The trick to keeping yourself on track is to remind yourself that if you finish up early, you can take the afternoon off to drink in all that sun. (Don’t forget your sunscreen!)