Reading Jane Smiley's Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel

and so I thought I'd quote some passages over the next few blog posts for you to ponder.

As every novelist has a style, so every novelist has conviction, which is a type of emotion, not an act of reason. It may take draft after draft to achieve a perfectly natural style. It also may take draft after draft to write with sufficient conviction. This conviction can be about anything - a specific theory of human nature, a particular analysis of a single incident, a simple certainty that the writer knows what is true and has to tell it....

The most basic conviction of every novelist from Lady Murasaki on, though, is that things are not as they appear; this conviction can be added to or modified in accordance with the novelist's particular perceptions. Of course, poets and dramatists frequently express the same conviction, but novelists must express it, because narrative point of view inherently delineates the contrast between what one person thinks and what others around him think. Literary artists who are driven by the feeling that appearances are deceiving and that they know what the truth really is are drawn to the novel for this very reason.

To think about: what is your conviction in the novel you are currently writing?

Mid-year blues

I think everyone in my household is suffering from mid-year blues. I feel as though I haven't yet got a handle on balancing my life-with-teenagers, teaching life and writing life. Guess which is suffering? Yes, you got it. The writing - because that has the quietest voice. Well, the quietest voice on a daily basis.

Teenagers are loud and pretty insistent in their demands - drive me here, please. Feed me now, please. Teach me to knit now, please. Come and see this. You'll love it. Let's have a dvd night together. Let's go out. Let's make a chocolate cake. Take me for a driving lesson, please.

These are all good things - and fun things (apart from the driving lessons which are exercises in facing death calmly). Teenagers should be heard - they won't stay teenagers.

My teaching life is equally demanding and loud - mark these assignments, answer the discussion boards, write these emails, participate in this meeting. There are good reasons for teaching which must be respected - and it's not all about the money.

My writing life whispers. You haven't been good to us. You have neglected us. We are sulking. It's easier to ignore this whisper. It's easy to say, well, never mind, you don't make much money, anyway. You didn't get shortlisted this year. You can wait.

But the whisper and the sulk are insistent. If they are ignored for too long, depression sets in. It's like a poison which spreads to everything - the teenagers, the teaching, the cooking - even the dogs. I become snappy and impatient. I become overwhelmed and lost. I lose focus, a sense of who I am, a sense of who I can be, a sense of purpose and most of all, a sense of joy.

So, this week I'm returning to the kind of schedule I used to keep when the kids were young and it was seemingly impossible to do anything that didn't involve strict routines. I'm returning to carving out an hour or an hour and a half, or even half an hour from my working day in which to honour writing self.

I'll begin by doing my morning pages a la Julia Cameron.

I suggest, if you have the mid-year blues, or are feeling overwhelmed by life and work, or underwhelmed by joy, you think about honouring your writing self.

Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way is an okay place to start. Or pick up a copy of Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. Set aside your writing time as strictly as you'd set aside eating or exercising time. Think of it as food for your soul or exercise for your writing muscles. Honour yourself as an artist. It's quite possibly less time that you'd spend watching television, or ironing, or checking out Facebook. You can do it. You're worth it.