I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Wednesday Writing, I consider my writing practice and skills and how to improve upon them.
So much of life today occurs quickly. All this instant this and instant that makes it hard for us writers to understand that it might take a long time to write a book, and that we often can’t predict how much time the work will take. It might make us expect to write our books more quickly than they can or should be written. It might make the people in our lives believe we should finish our work sooner than it’s possible. It might make us feel like failures because we’re taking such a long time. And it might cause us to abandon an important work, like Rush almost did.
Sometimes a book comes quickly. More often, a book takes a long time. The only way to finish is to keep working until a book is finished. Rushing through writing a book is rushing through life.
Louse De Salvo, The Art of Slow Writing: Reflections on Time, Craft, and Creativity
I started the book that has morphed into a midlife romance manifesto over seven years ago. Now that I’ve landed on the form I want the book to take — part self-help guide, part philosophical tome, part memoir, part cultural critique — I can imagine completing it and publishing it. But I wouldn’t be surprised if that didn’t happen for another year or two. I still have two and a quarter years left in my 1000 day project. Perhaps a reasonable target is to get it done and published within that time?
I’d like to do it more quickly.
DeSalvo writes, “As we write our books over time, and as we add new material bit by bit, our work can take on a depth and complexity that would be missing if we rushed through the process.”
My initial dating stories were crude and unsophisticated. As I spend more time with them, and as I move further from when they happened, I understand them with more depth and complexity. For example, I move beyond simple labels for people who didn’t do what I want to an exploration of their complicated selves, rich histories, and multiple motivations.
More fun and perhaps more useful, I’ve gradually added and developed philosophical ideas that make sense of my own dating history and that of the people I’ve met. I never expected when I started the memoir that it would take me back to my philosophical studies like this. Discovering the work of Byung-Chul Han, rediscovering Kierkegaard’s wisdom, digging into the power of existentialism: this has become my life’s project, and a very enriching one.
This could not have happened if I rushed through writing and publishing an early version of the memoir.
DeSalvo shares:
Years ago, I attended a lecture by the late historial Robin W. Winks, who spoke about his book The Historian as Detective. The writer, Winks said, must live with the knowledge that any book will be incomplete and imperfect. He suggested that we think of each work as an essay: an attempt to get at something and not as a definitive work.
“I work until I’m finished, not until the book’s finished,” Winks said. The book is never finished. And if we are to complete our books, we must learn to live with the fact that each effort will be an incomplete, imperfect attempt to codify our vision. To complete a book, we must accept that it won’t be perfect. And our pages will never become books unless we take the necessary steps to complete them, imperfect as they are.
When I finish my book and publish it, it will not be perfect. That idea is soothing to me. I cannot produce something perfect. But I believe I can produce something useful and engaging.