Treat writing as a job. Be disciplined. Lots of writers get a bit OCD-ish about this. Graham Greene famously wrote 500 words a day. Jean Plaidy managed 5,000 before lunch, then spent the afternoon answering fan mail. My minimum is 1,000 words a day – which is sometimes easy to achieve, and is sometimes, frankly, like shitting a brick, but I will make myself stay at my desk until I've got there, because I know that by doing that I am inching the book forward. Those 1,000 words might well be rubbish – they often are. But then, it is always easier to return to rubbish words at a later date and make them better.
Writing fiction is not "self-expression" or "therapy". Novels are for readers, and writing them means the crafty, patient, selfless construction of effects. I think of my novels as being something like fairground rides: my job is to strap the reader into their car at the start of chapter one, then trundle and whizz them through scenes and surprises, on a carefully planned route, and at a finely engineered pace.
-Sarah Waters, from The Guardian
So I'm not actually going to talk about arts and crafts. I'm going to talk about art as crafts. As a teenager, I went to a school filled with - and targeting - wannabe artists. There were more berets and angsty meltdowns than you could shake a finger at. There was much talk about students "having" something inside them that should be lured out on stage. There were excercises designed to bring out traumas that might be helpful when playing roles too big for us. Ultimately, though, there were very few artists. Most of us have gone on to study law or languages, to become parents, or to struggling our way through work.
The more time passes between high school and now, the more I appreciate hard work and crafty artists. Sure, arts come easier for some, but I really took to heart what my dance instructor said recently when talking about showing emotion on stage and expressing instead of just moving. She said something in the lines of "Showing emotion can be learned. Longing is an extended arm, a head-tilt is an emotion. Everyone can learn it. All you need is courage." Courage and a lot of practice.
We can glorify art - or anything else, for that matter - all we want, but what it boils down to simple stuff. Dancers move their bodies, singers move their vocal cords, guitar players move their fingers. This isn't to deglorify the process - to me, it makes it all the more miraculous how swinging your leg through air can bring such satisfaction and so much feeling to both the one moving and the one watching. And it's taken me an embarrassingly long time to realize that practice shows. There is a difference between doing something "alright" or adequately and mastering something.
I love the idea of craftiness also because it gives me hope. I am (re-)learning to dance, and instead of moaning over not being able to do this or that, I try to rejoice over every little sign of progress - which are many if one just has the eye to see it. I am learning to play a new instrument, and I'm realizing that things I thought nigh-on impossible can be achieved - through practice. There is no arcane magic equation, just starting with simple things and progressing onto more difficult ones.
Here are some artists and pieces of art that I think are wonderfully crafty:
Johnny Depp is delightfully physical. His characters have tics, mannerisms, outward expressions of what they're feeling inside. He's not afraid to create caricatures, which often makes his characters seem oddly realistic. I'll always remember the scene in The Secret Window where the character is having a moment of utter confusion and fear, and all of a sudden makes weird "rah-rah" sounds that fit perfectly. Apparently this was a mannerism Depp took from one of his children. He observed, he thought, he acted.
'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out' actually isn't my favourite song of The Smiths' by a long shot, but I do think Morrissey is at his cleverest in terms of vocals. I really love all the slides and cracks. It sounds very effortless and more "earnest" somehow than his vocals in general, but I don't doubt this is because of hard work and attention to detail.
The prologue in Donna Tartt's The Little Friend will always stay in my mind because it is the craftiest passage I have read. While the student of literature in me can't help but marvel at the vehicles she's using, the reader is swept away: run-on sentences forcing a faster pace of reading and a disjointed feel similar to that of the characters. The novel wanes a bit after that, but those few pages are brilliant evidence of how hard work can manifest as effortless and effective.
And then there's stuff like this:
Remember: The only difference between a beginner and a genius is 10,000 hours of practice. The only thing separating normal from insane is 100 hours without sleep. And you know what they say about insanity and genius.
