1 December 2003
Advent
Something is coming. That's advent. Expectation, excitement, delight, patience ...
I'm writing a novel - Labyrinth-an adventure story set in the medieval past and the present day. I have been working on it for some time. If you count from the first germ of an idea, it has already been in my head for 6 years. I will deliver a typescript at the end of the year.
(In fact my writing schedule has been tied to the seasons right through 2003. If you look back through my diary pages, you'll see what I mean.)
About a year ago I published an Advice to writers page entitled Finish it. Well, that's where I am now.
I am working not to discover what my characters will do next or how a new idea will pop up and burst through the steady flow of the planned narrative. I know what's going to happen and how it will all come out. I just have to write it.
It seems to me that, in the end, writing is a trial of patience and persistence. When I see my children playing, developing their complicated imaginary worlds, I sometimes envy the fact that when they are weary of their creation they can put it aside or change it, say, from a palace to a desert or their characters from aliens to animals and back again.
Writing long prose - in my case a novel - requires stamina and exclusion. You can't think about your other ideas. You must test and hone the one you have committed to.
Like the long walk in and the long walk out of the Labyrinth, it is a test of endurance.
You need time to learn from the Labyrinth.
