Written Reality: Rants and Raves: American Gods and a British One
American Gods and a British One
by Andrea M. Newton
October 23, 2007
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A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
-- Thomas Mann
Neil Gaiman is a god.
My first taste of Gaiman was in college when I was browsing through a comic book shop and picked up a copy of Black Orchid. It was the first comic that I ever bought. I later discovered and fell in love with The Sandman, the comic he wrote about the Lord of Dreams. I own every issue -- the individuals, not just the anthologies -- but to this day when I'm in a comic shop I find myself drifting to the S-section, just to pull them out and look at them.
When Neverwhere was released, I got lost in its dark alleys and subway tunnels. I rarely read a book more than once, because I know how it ends. But reading an excerpt of Neverwhere online yesterday, I found the walls of my office fading away, the buzz of the aquarium's light lost beneath the crunch of shoes on gravel -- or teeth on a dead rat.
None of this is why Gaiman is a god.
Admittedly, I haven't read everything he's written. The man's a much more prolific writer than I am a voracious reader. And, although I admire him more than I do any other writer alive today, I don't like everything that he's written. I'm probably one of a handful of people who didn't really care for American Gods. And Mirrormask determined for me that -- much as Gaiman himself said of Lovecraft -- his work is better as a book than a movie.
But he's still a god. Because he's so unbelievably human.
I've been struggling with a short story for months now. I came up with the idea at the same time that I was finishing research for a novel; rather than put off the story until after the novel was done and likely end up losing the feel for it completely, I figured I'd knock out the story real quick and then move on to the novel. I mean, it's a short story. We're talking, what, a week, two tops to finish it?
That was June. And I'm only half finished.
Sometimes stories come easily -- the words are so clear in your mind that you can't write fast enough to get it all down.
Sometimes writing is like a series of root canals without anesthesia -- long, slow, and unbelieveably painful.
But I have never had a story as hard to write as this one.
I know the characters inside and out. I've mulled them over in my mind so thoroughly that I can tell you what kind of sandwich they prefer for lunch. And whether they want fries with that. I've researched the location where the story takes place so much and seen so many pictures of it that I can visualize myself walking through its catacombs even though I've never been within a thousand miles of it -- and likely won't be any time soon. I know how the story begins, how it ends, and how they get there.
Yet I keep writing myself into deadends.
I don't mean your typical "I just can't get this scene right" kind of thing. I'm talking about complete deadends, brick walls that keep the characters from getting to the next part. So I have to back up a few pages, find the fundamental flaw in the plot, figure out how it should be, and rewrite that section before I can even get to the next. I've got ten pages completed, but have probably written thirty pages all said and done. I've lost count of how many times I've had those "Of course! That's how it's supposed to be!" moments.
As badly as things are going, I found myself thinking that maybe this story wasn't meant to be written. Maybe it was one of those ideas they tell you about in creative writing classes that's an interesting plot idea but just isn't enough to be a full story. That maybe I should cut my losses and move on to that novel I was researching all those months ago.
Until I read this in Neil Gaiman's blog:
And I am still posting links to things instead of writing interesting things in the blog, because I am still somewhere in the hell that's either Chapter 5 or Chapter 6 of THIS DAMNED BOOK which seems determined to be longer than it was meant to be. (You're not a novel, I tell it. You're not even a novella. You're a novelette. And you're due in on Monday. But the story merely laughs and stretches ominously and I have no idea what this bloody pool is doing in the middle of the forest.)
Oh my God! I thought. I know exactly how you feel!
Followed quickly by, Holy crap! Gaiman goes through this? GAIMAN?!
I know that movie stars are people. I know that they have morning mouth when they first wake up, that they have to put on socks and wash dishes and bang the pickle jar lid on the counter to get it open, that their garages are as cluttered with junk as the rest of ours and that they get catalogs they didn't order in the mail. Deep down, I know the same is true of writers. Maybe even moreso. But somehow I never imagined writers -- the really good, truly successful ones -- screaming in frustration about "THIS DAMNED BOOK".
I always pictured it more like a computer programmer: you hack away in frustration when you're first starting out, but after you've been at it for a while, you can sit down at a keyboard and know exactly how to script something, or look at a buggy piece of code, know exactly what the problem is, and fix it as easily as the rest of us breathe. You walk around with this aura of geek godness because you're that good, and the rest of us bow as you walk by, chanting, "We're not worthy!"
Gaiman blew that away.
He reminded me that writers are regular people, just like you and me -- even the truly successful ones who hit the top of the bestseller list the day after their book is released and have hordes of fans clamoring for their autographs at ComicCon. They just have a more visible job than we do.
He made me realize that if he has to fight and grapple with a story to get it on the page but comes out with something as incredible as Neverwhere, then I can do the same. True, I'd enjoy my job a lot more if I could hit that flow, that point where the words come faster than I can write them down. But just because the story isn't easy to write doesn't mean it isn't worth writing.
And just because Gaiman's got an article in Wikipedia and a book that's been turned into a major motion picture doesn't mean that he doesn't struggle just like me.
I still feel guilty about leaving the characters in my story stuck on a train for three months just to lead them to an ossuary and leave them stranded there for another two. But I now know that while my characters might take one step back for each two forward, I will, come Hell or high water, get them to the end.
If Gaiman can do it, so can I.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a story to beat into submission.
UPDATE: October 26, 2007
IT'S FINISHED!
For five months, I pulled, strained, and ripped at the words in my brain to get half the story down on paper. A Gaiman-blog-induced epiphany and three days later, the full first draft is done.
Oh, yeah, you bet I've got Gaiman's site bookmarked for the next time this happens...