I began my latest piece of writing, a prosimetrum called The Set-Up, seven months ago yesterday. It’s about spies and sewers and despots. I’ve almost thrown it away twice, and will probably try and throw it away again. I’m not sure if it’s a)any good, b)remotely entertaining, c)anywhere near finished, or d)publishable. I didn’t start it with publication in mind, but the longer I spend on it, the more I’d like to see it swapped for cash, even if it is to pay myself back for materials. While it’s not particularly long—33,000 words/160 pages—the writing of it has generated getting on for a thousand sheets of paper in the form of corrected printouts, rough notes and exercise books containing drafts of the poems. Many of the pages are too creased to be fed through a printer a second time. Half of the wad has gone to recycling (with title pages removed in case someone at the sorting office reads it and doesn’t understand irony) or to warm the house (a tube made from about twenty sheets of copier paper will burn for several minutes).
The final prose section of a dozen pages has now been rewritten over twenty times and I’m still unconvinced that it’s ‘finished’. It’s frustrating not to get something right at the first attempt, but I remind myself that Williamson rewrote ‘Tarka the Otter’ about eighteen times before he was satisfied with it (not that I’m comparing my literary effort to that great book). For me writing is improvisation. I like to kick an idea round, adding to it, changing it, seeing what I can do with it; discarding it if it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s wasteful, and frustrating, but the main thing is, in spite of all the ‘how to’ books and the courses, there are no rules for Creative Writing. Chacun a son gout.
Philip
Philip Leslie is the author of 'The History of Us' published by Legend Press.
