Friday 12 April 2013

Nineteen novels later, Anne Tyler is zen about starting another one ...

By Candy Gourlay

I can't decide which is more stomach curdling, waiting for a book to come out or starting a new one.

I've just handed in copy edits of my forthcoming novel Shine, which according to Amazon is going to be out on the 5th of September.


The listing's been up for three years, and every time I didn't hand the manuscript in when I said I would, Amazon simply moved the publication date along a few more months.
This time, Amazon must surely have the right due date because the correct synopsis has at long last replaced the wrong one that's been there since 2011 (Written before I knew what my story was going to be about, sorry).

I can't wait to stop being a debut author!

(Sometimes when I'm visiting schools librarians are surprised to discover I've only got one novel published. I'm always slightly embarrassed to confess I've only got the one - as if I'd been forced to admit that I cycle with training wheels)

But the prospect of having a second novel out is just as terrifying as having a first novel.

Will fans of the first one be disappointed? I liked it the last time I read it, but ... maybe I'll be the only person to like it. Or maybe there are so many books being published, nobody's going to notice it. Or maybe it's been a big waste of time and emotion, who am I kidding????

Yup. I am full of fear.

And yet, I've started work on my next book. There's fear there too.

Which idea should I go for? Have I picked the right one? A historical novel? You don't even read historical novels! You don't know what you're doing! Who are you kidding????

So it is with quite a measure of awe that I regard legends like Pulitzer Prize winning Anne Tyler, currently at work on her 20th novel.

In a rare interview (Anne Tyler's given several rare interviews recently) she told Mark Lawson of Radio 4's Front Row:
(Now) I don't say oh gosh, this is never gonna work, I'm stymied, I've been sitting here a week, nothing's happened - goodbye! I feel very sort of zen about it all. I say well ... I've been through this before, it always sort of comes out.

In other words - keep calm and write, everything's going to be fine.

My editor, on our last meeting, assured me that my next book is going to amaze me with the ease with which it will flow from my pen. You know what you're doing now, she told me.

Do I? Will I recognize the signs that the plot is not working? Will I recognize the feeling when the character is thinner than cardboard? Maybe I will and maybe I won't.

Anne Tyler also granted (another) rare interview to Lisa Allardice of the Guardian (It's brilliant - after you finish reading this, go and savour it ).

I especially loved the bit about her writing method. Writes Allardice: 'For a writer who is so protective of her privacy, she is unusually open about her routine'.

... it involves revising tiny sections in "quite small and distinct handwriting – it is almost like knitting a novel" (she insists on white paper, no lines, and swears by "the miraculous Pilot P500 gel pen"). When she is happy with each section she types it up, then writes the whole manuscript out in longhand again. She then reads it into a tape-recorder to listen out for false notes or clumsiness. "You think a character would never say that, but you only know it when you speak it out loud." To avoid typing it all out again, she ingeniously plays it back to herself on a stenographer's machine with a pedal to pause so she can put that comma exactly where she wants it. One of the reasons she doesn't like her first novels is that at the time she felt that to revise them was unspontaneous. "Spontaneity is not always a good thing."
Right now she's writing novel number twenty. She says she's taking her time, she's so old (old? 72 isn't old) she hints that she's hoping for posthumous publication.

'I'm trying to make it last as long as I can,' she told Mark Lawson. 'If I write it backwards through the generations, then it could end whenever I died,' she told Lisa Allardice.

Such a relaxed outlook. Especially to a newbie author like me. There she is making it last as long as she can, while I'm hurrying with everything, browbeaten by the passing of time, the terrible urgency of it all making me rush, and rushing making me have to rewrite and rewrite, and through it all consumed with a fear of failure.

At this point in my career, I'm not sure I can keep calm. But if or when I make it to Book Number Twenty, I hope I can be as sanguine as Anne Tyler and write just because that's the way I live.





18 comments :

  1. I loved the Front Row interview. I was feeling incredibly frazzled about all sorts of horrible things, and it was so inspiring to hear her, so grounded and calm and wonderful. I've just reread Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and am now reading The Beginner's Goodbye and I might just have to revisit the other 17...

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    1. I hadn't read Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant ... I'm reading it now! Downloaded an omnibus of her novels after the interview! Inspiring.

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  2. Harper Lee wrote just one novel, but it was a classic, To Killl A Mockingbird. I believe she was terrified of doing a second one that was a flop! :)

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    1. I know how she felt! Book number 2 is a killer. But I guess you have to decide ... do you want to write a book? Or be a writer? Selfishly one wishes that Harper Lee decided on the latter.

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  3. I'm not that far yet, but as the 1st publication scoots closer to possibility, I find myself already worrying about the second. I hope, someday, self-doubt and worry disappear.

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    1. It probably will ... but at this stage, I can't imagine it.

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  4. I love Anne tyler - my favourite is Digging to America. Just started reading Dinner at Homesick restaurant too - it was on my shelf and I thought I'd read it but maybe I haven't yet. What a treat -sucked in immediately.

    Anne Tyler's published nineteen books - it's just the voice of experience. The experience of it always having been fine before must be very calming.

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  5. It's so funny to read this Candy - it's such a glimpse into writer's neurosis! We must all be a bit mad. As I long for the first deal, the first book, thinking everything will be great once the first one's out there - you remind us that life isn't that simple - it's all stages on a road...I do know this though - Shine will be great. I don't doubt it for a minute.

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    1. Thanks for your faith, Kathy. No, life isn't simple.

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  6. I had half a night and half a day of that terrible anxiety you describe when I uploaded the first episode of my Duck&Bear webcomic and waited to see what reaction it might or might not get. I have never felt that way before and it was a revelation but I think that my experience was a tiny fraction of what it is like to be a writer. I didn't have the weight of a publishing house or worries about sales on my shoulders plus it all happened very quickly.

    For me, as an illustrator, I quickly move on to doing other things and because my work is usually highly specific to whatever group of people I am working with at the time I can leave each project behind.

    For writers the process of creating a book appears to be excruciatingly slow with many gatekeepers and many potential pitfalls to negotiate. I honestly don't know how writers cope with the pressures and uncertainties that come with being published but I'm glad you that you do stick with it, I love reading and am grateful for the books!

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    1. Duck and Bear is brilliant! When I'm doing design work I have the same getting on with the job attitude, but with writing ... why does it matter so much? Despite all the angst, I do enjoy the writing. (I do! I do!)

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  7. I love Anne Tyler. She creates sets of characters who are utterly believable. I read another 'rare' interview last year where she said something about not waiting to feel inspired in order to sit down and write i.e. you just have to get on with it, which reminds me ...

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    1. Hey I'd love to read that. Any chance of posting a link?

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    2. Here it is. The Guardian last year. So good, I've kept a paper version in one of my heaps to refer to when I need inspiration...
      http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/apr/13/anne-tyler-interview

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    3. Thanks, Rachel! We should compare heaps sometime.

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  8. Really enjoyable - and calming - post. The Anne Tyler zen method. Will try to remember the thought!

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  9. Dear Candy.

    Thank you for this post and for revealing you didn't meet deadlines when writing your second novel. My agent has been waiting nearly two years for me to finish my current novel. I keep saying "it'll be ready for you on xyz" and then missing the deadline. I feel such a useless article. But I am NEARLY finished now. I think.

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    1. I am very grateful to my publisher for being so understanding. All I can say is, I'd rather be late than to publish something unready for public scrutiny. Having said that, I am so glad it's done and I am proud of the result.

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