Write from Inside the Mess

Friday Write #158

My friends, I’ve fallen off the Substack schedule a bit. Something about the new year and wanting to dedicate more time to my novel, as well as to activities that don’t involve a computer. One morning when I could’ve been thinking about writing prompts I drew a bunch of rats with colored pencils. Another morning I took a sauna and then jumped—multiple times!—into the Willamette River.

it was very cold

I made a resolution to at least open the document of my book every single day, which I’ve managed to do; when you set the bar that low you have little choice but to clear it. I also bought 300 index cards because I thought they might be helpful for building an outline. A friend of mine told me how she’d written scenes on index cards and then put them all up on the wall so she could see the progression of things. Then I remembered I’d read an interview with Nabokov where he talked about using them, too:

I find now that index cards are really the best kind of paper that I can use for the purpose [of writing]. I don’t write consecutively from the beginning to the next chapter and so on to the end. I just fill in the gaps of the picture, of this jigsaw puzzle which is quite clear in my mind, picking out a piece here and a piece there and filling out part of the sky and part of the landscape and part of the—I don’t know, the carousing hunters.

Lord knows I’m not writing Pale Fire over here, but nevertheless, I liked reading this. I also recall that that Elizabeth Gilbert uses index cards (also not writing Eat, Pray, Love), so I googled how she does that for you.

But back to Nabokov and his writing schedule, just for fun:

I awake around seven in winter: my alarm clock is an Alpine chough—big, glossy, black thing with big yellow beak—which visits the balcony and emits a most melodious chuckle. For a while I lie in bed mentally revising and planning things. Around eight: shave, breakfast, enthroned meditation, and bath—in that order. Then I work till lunch in my study, taking time out for a short stroll with my wife along the lake. Practically all the famous Russian writers of the nineteenth century have rambled here at one time or another. Zhukovski, Gogol, Dostoevski, Tolstoy—who courted the hotel chambermaids to the detriment of his health—and many Russian poets. But then, as much could be said of Nice or Rome. We lunch around one p.m., and I am back at my desk by half-past one and work steadily till half-past six. Then a stroll to a newsstand for the English papers, and dinner at seven. No work after dinner. And bed around nine. I read till half-past eleven…

I love reading about other writers’ routines because it feels clarifying and inspiring and oh so very interesting. But it’s also deceptive. Once a person’s book exists, the days that produced it start to look orderly in retrospect, like the work itself must’ve unfolded in the same calm, methodical way. As if Nabokov rose with the chough, filled out a few cards, took a stroll, and the novel obediently revealed itself.

The truth is that the order belongs to the telling, not the doing. The mess doesn’t make it into the anecdote. And at least in my experience, writing never feels that clean while you’re inside it.

writing is hard but at least it’s not the calculus my kid has to do 😵‍💫

So! Here are three possible prompts for this week:

—Write about something you (or your character) only understood once it was over.

—Write in fragments that don’t yet know how they connect. Resist the urge to organize them. Trust that coherence is something that happens after, not during. In an hour, or a day, or a week, go back and look at them. What through line can you find?

—Write from inside the mess, the part that doesn’t yet make sense. See what happens.

Happy writing—

Emily