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As a writer, you get used to it. An old friend says hi, and then immediately follows up with, "What are you working on?"
When I'm partway through a novel, the answer is easy. Because writing a novel is an all-consuming thing. I might be able to squeeze in a short story, written piecemeal in those random bits of dead time when I'm not researching, writing, editing, or revising the novel. But it's just a sideshow.
Right now, however, I still haven't decided what my next novel should be. So, pictured above, is the stack of files containing close to everything I'm working on at the moment. That comes to:
Four novel openings, ranging from 8 to 49 pages.
One essay.
One book introduction (for a reprint of somebody else's book).
Two beginnings of collaborative stories that may or may ever happen. The Eileen Gunn one will have to wait for her to finish her novel.
Five partially written short stories.
A file of six (one to two page) story openings: "Saint Jerry the Hermit," "Two Riders," "The Werewolf in Winter,""Dinosaur on the Moon," "The Water People," and "Mercury is Hell."
"The Werewolf in Winter" may well get written someday, just because that's a nifty title. The other brief story openings, probably not. The rest (with the exception of one-to-three novels) will all certainly be done someday, though it may take quite a while for some of them.
Right now, I grab the stack of files, look through it to see what I feel like working on, then sit down and add a page or six, or possible a paragraph, or else, like Oscar Wilde, I may laboriously remove a word I'd previously spent a day inserting. This is the glamour and magic of an author's life.
It's not the best way to write. (It can't possibly be!) But it's the one I'm stuck with.
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6 comments:
That carpet has become an old friend over the however-many-years I’ve been reading this blog.
We bought it at an auction.
In terms of the best way to write, I always think of something Frederick Pohl said in a volume from the 1970s called Hell's Carthographers, which was the memoirs of six SF writers and then, as an appendix, a few pages on how each wrote. Fun book. Anyway, Pohl talks about different methods he used over the years, but then ends like this (quoting from memory so it's probably not exact):
"How do I write? As best as I can, in any way that I can. And that is the Whole of the Law."
My guess, Mr. Swanwick, is that you are following the Law.
Ok, after that I had to look it up. I was close—but Pohl was better. Here are his actual words: "The way I write is the way every other writes: the best I can, in whatever way I can; and that is the Whole of the Law."
(Also, I didn't misspell "cartographers"; that was a typo. It's a whole different vibe.)
"The Werewolf in Winter" sounds like a Mongolian Wizard story, and we should definitely have some more of those.
Come to think of it, that would be a good title for the 21st and final story. I may have to steal it from myself.
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