Writing Takes Forever

Originally posted May 10th 2023

GRANNY WARNING: HEGGY I’D ADVISE YOU SKIP THIS ONE, LOVE YOU

I have been slacking on substack due to working on the ol’ novel. I discovered the joy of making edits and realising I’m only half way done as well as needing to make several fundamental changes which no doubt means I’ve got at least another two years of writing. It’s like I’ve been putting together a puzzle since January 2021 only to realise there’s another bag of pieces and I’ve been doing it the wrong way up. I also write too many metaphors.

I like writing comparatively, which is why I’m so prone to metaphor. I’m aware of the general advice these days which is to be literal, not to fluff up because it can go wrong very quickly. I have read several books where the metaphors seem out of place and maybe trying too hard. But I’m also trying, maybe too hard, to be a good writer. After years of painting I’ve learned that if I try too hard it will end up being a miserable experience and it will never be as good as the pieces where I went with the flow; maybe spontaneously sketched out an idea. “Don’t over think it” and all that jazz. It’s hard to have a sense of spontaneity when writing a novel though, given that they are things that take time and should include a fair amount of forethought. I’m suspicious of novelists who seem to pop out a book every other year, not that I think ghostwriters are involved (though there very well may be), but I’m curious how one can think it all through so quickly. How are there not a thousand roadblocks and continuity errors? How can you write something narratively consistent and not change your mind constantly?

Perhaps confidence is key and I am always second-guessing. Also the longer I work on the book the more afraid I become. What if it’s shit? That would mean I spent all this time on something rubbish and I’ll have wasted my ambitions. Yes, I know that is the risk we all take when pursuing creative endeavours, but it doesn’t ease the tension.

Looping back to the painting comparison. I don’t think it’s bad to try hard, you might just not get the response you want. So you have to ask yourself whether or not you’re doing it for the sake of creative effort or for external validation. Sometimes they overlap but a lot of the time, to the point it is a meme amoung artists, you work on something for ages only for it to get fairly low interaction online whilst a sketch that you did in 5 minutes for some reason blows up. Maybe trying hard builds up in your head and you can start feeling like you’re owed something for it. Maybe those authors who get an idea and just go with it, able to churn them out, have unlocked the ability not to be so worried about it. If you draw a lot, you’re not so worried about the image being perfect, while if you focus on one thing for a long time, you can become a bit obsessive. Finding a balance of quantity vs quality is difficult but when I used to paint a new picture every other day I think I learned a lot more than nowadays where I maybe do one a month. You have to get out your bad ideas along with the good ones because it’s hard to tell which is which.

I joked to someone that I should give up trying to be whatever kind of writer I am and start writing erotic historical fiction to pay the bills. I realise that is the writer’s equivalent of “I’ll just become a stripper” aka underestimating how difficult it actually is and the chances of being successful. Though I suppose people have started saying “I’ll just start an Onlyfans” now but it holds the same sentiment. It would also mean I’d have to write sex scenes, which are very difficult to write well. I think Michele Tea’s Black Wave and Andrea Lawlor’s Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl have the best ones and they’re not even erotic novels. Admittedly, erotica is a genre that I’m not familiar with. I don’t find sex particularly interesting literary-wise, not because it’s fundamentally uninteresting, but because most people are bad at writing it. I’d have to be a total hack to write it and I’m not quite there yet.

Actually, I’m going on a side tangent about sex scenes because I think they are very useful for story-telling and are like action scenes. The film The Raid (2011) is basically one long action scene. Every hit progresses the story forward, pushing our character’s narratives. It is “mindless violence” as plot. To compare, the sex scenes in The Handmaiden (2016) are a way of showing the main characters connecting with their sexuality and taking control of it after being exploited, which leads to them taking control of their own lives. It serves a narrative purpose and the film doesn’t work without them. I don’t think these types of scenes have to serve a narrative function but I think people easily dismiss them because they believe they automatically don’t serve the story (and miss the point entirely). The entire film is about sexuality and ownership. Do you really want to watch a film about sex and there be no sex? Imagine The Raid but they cut away before every punch! It’d drive you mad.

I mentioned in a previous substack when talking about Porn by Polly Barton that sex work is an amplification of labour issues. The conversation around sex scenes, like porn, raise questions about morals, much like the satanic panic and Video Nasties of the 80s and 90s (Satanic Panic, History of the Video Nasty). They see a problem but are asking the wrong questions; we should be looking at ethics, not morals. How are the workers being treated? How does the director or writer consider their characters, and what is being projected? These things require education not repression; cutting out sex scenes doesn’t solve the issues of the objectification of women in media for example. We cannot pretend these things, sex in particular, are not important aspects of life. This means we have to be better at writing sex scenes, we have to consider why it’s there, like any other scene. Is it important for the character? Will it affect the plot later on? For fun? I’ve read so many books where the sex scene is about how bad it is, to show how miserable the protagonist is with their partner or themselves, so I hope more authors do just write for the fun of it. Even most media about sex paints it in a negative light, these characters enjoy sex but are also made miserable because they enjoy sex (ie Fleabag). In Worst Person in the World (2021), the film is about relationships, sexuality, identity, but the only sex scene is also a breakup scene. Sex=bad. I understand there is a huge amount of shame about sex in Western culture, but how can we possibly combat that if all our media that is pro-sex is also anti-sex? Music seems to be the only medium that fully embraces sexuality unabashedly but even then, a lot of it is innuendo (but from a poetic standpoint, that is preferable).

I’m a hypocrite, because I said I don’t find sex interesting, yet here I am rambling about it. I just think it has the potential to be interesting but where it’s at at the minute is only that: potential. Unfortunately modern sex scenes are like bad horror movies, people think because there’s bodies, blood and guts that’s all it needs, they think that it’s inherently shocking so no real effort has to be put in. I disagree with this lazy practice and it’s blandness. I am reminded of the phase/article “Everyone is beautiful and no one is horny”, ‘cause that’s how so much of contemporary media feels to me. Barbie and Ken dolls, hairless and sexless, thinking that their conventional attractiveness=sensuality when in reality they’re just plastic dolls. Sexuality is a duality, like a very good horror movie, it disgusts you and draws you in for more. Sex, horror and comedy: it’s all about timing. It’s beautiful because it’s not pretty, it’s a bodily fluids cocktail, it’s the reason any of us are alive and we do not talk about it except behind closed doors. I’m not asking for more smut writers, there are enough of them and I’ve seen enough second-hand tiktoks to know that’s a whole other discussion. I just think that a lot of writers want to write about life and love and joy but they leave out sex, or sex is the enemy. And I’m just very tired of that narrative.

Does this mean my current novel will have a sex scene? God, maybe it will now. Great, I’ve given myself more work to do. Though, it would have to make narrative sense and I can’t see my protagonist allowing anyone near them. I’ve written a character who is fairly emotionally and physically closed off, and I don’t want to write about sexual trauma, so maybe this guy won’t get laid. Feel kinda bad for them now.

Let’s do a tonal whiplash back to the main topic which is writing: the new Zelda game comes out this week so no one is going to hear from me for about two weeks. I will get no reading done and will probably take the time spent not staring at my Switch looking out a window praying that I have not permanently ruined my eyes. I feel like it’s a race against the clock to get as many things done as I can before the hyper-fixation begins. It’s very weird having to put in rules and timers for myself like I’m a child but I know I can’t simply play a game for an hour and trust myself to go back to work. Working for yourself sounds like a dream until you realise being your own boss is actually quite hard if you have very little self-discipline. I’m still trying to figure out how to organise myself, because some days writing is a miserable experience, other days I feel like I’m a genius writing the next great novel. But you can’t rely on the latter, the miserable days are actually the most important, because most days you don’t want to go to work, even when you like your job, but you go. It’s funny writing this because before starting this essay, I’d opened the document with the chapter of the novel I’m working on, looked at the yellow highlighted sections that need to be rewritten and opened a blank document to write this instead.

How can one write in an age like this, you know? There are so many things all of the time, my mind already feels wrung out and the book’s not even bloody done! I made an unrealistic goal to complete the first draft and first round of edits by fall of this year, thinking that my first summer in New York would be the perfect time to hunker down. But going through agoraphobia treatment has given me a bit of perspective, because my therapist and I discuss pleasure. Rather than be motivated by what I “should” do, I could instead focus on what brings me joy. Because I have this thing where I don’t do the things I like for some reason or put in little effort to make myself happy. An odd example is that I never heat up leftovers, I can’t be bothered, and I hate cold rice. The other day I decided to take leftover rice and rather than begrudgingly eat it cold, I put it in the microwave and wow, who would have guessed, it was pretty nice. I had never before considered just…. heating up the rice and enjoying my food. I am so weirdly set on depriving myself of any effort to make things better. Another thing I enjoy is writing and sometimes I just don’t write. I love reading and sometimes I just don’t read. I love watching movies and I will not watch movies. It’s as though I’d rather my mind be totally blank than experience pleasure. This year I’ve put in more of an effort to do the things I like. Last year I hardly did any of it, and evidence shows I had a miserable fucking time. So maybe I shouldn’t be so worried that I’m probably not going to finish my book this summer, because I could instead enjoy the process.

I’m what the kids call a “scatterbrain”. This is perhaps why I don’t understand how there are authors with 10+ books under their belt, because given the amount of time it’s taken me to write half a novel in 2 years, I’m not sure how they do it. I have maybe written 200 pages and only about half of it is usable. And the novel is a bit scattered too, though mostly intentionally, because as I said before, I like to be comparative and there are sections that meander off because I want it to feel like a conversation. I should probably just write the damn thing, rather than lament that I haven’t finished the damn thing. But I think that’s part of the fun of being a writer.

I have been contemplating what this substack is. I have been wondering “What’s your point?” in regards to this and previous pieces. It has all been very observational without a thesis, but I’m thinking I’ll find the thesis at the end of it all, like the title of a song or painting. I just really like pointing things out, but I need to work on why. It may come off as confusing but I like that I always contradict myself, I never want anything to be set in stone, because I am often wrong or at least, not quite right. But perhaps that means I lack conviction. I want you to picture all these essays as me chatting in between nervously biting my thumb. This is an exercise in earnestness.

Thank you for reading,

-Enya xx