Artistic Self-Doubt

The thoughts started on Sunday. It had only been about a week since I

started writing some ideas for a new mystery novel. It was still very early stages. I had a few new characters and a few characters from the first novel. I had a setting, a murder victim, and some thoughts about who the murderer was. This all sounds very positive. And to any other person the sense of accomplishment would have swelled in his or her chest.

I felt awful. The reality of the situation had started to hit. 

Shit. Could I do this at all? What if I can’t write another story? What if the first one doesn’t get published? Who are these people I’ve created? Are they even a little realistic? How do I do this? Where do I start? Shit. There is a lot of work coming up. Can I do this?

It was a terrible case of artist’s self-doubt.

Churchill talked about his black dog following him around. Black dog

was a gentle euphemism for his struggle with depression. I don’t know

if artists name their doubts, but I hear everyone has them. I don’t

call my doubts anything except for my version of reality in that moment—however unrealistic the thoughts sound to others, or even to myself in retrospect. 

The Globe and Mail featured an article on the filming of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children by Deepa Mehta (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/movies/deepa-mehta-films-rushdies-midnights-children/article2021293/). Mehta and the crew talked about threats from fundamentalists and censorship, working with a team of Canadians in Sri Lanka on a film that is based in India, and luring crows with fish heads stuffed into fake corpses for the ‘killing fields’ scene.

Mehta spoke of artistic self-doubt when one of the sets was intentionally burned after filming had been completed. Journalist Stephanie Nolan writes, “The last of the flames went out just before dawn a few days ago, and Mehta was suddenly filled with doubt. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, it’s going to be crappy. What have I done? The most beloved book of all time – I’m an idiot. Salman is going to hate it.’” Mehta texted Rushdie to tell him this.

Rushdie immediately texted back: “Every time I finish a book, I think it’s crap. And sometimes it isn’t.””

So, Mehta and Rushdie are world-renowned, they’ve won awards for their work in directing and writing respectively, and they still have moments where they wonder what it is they are doing and if they’ll be able to pull it off. Maybe they have strategies to keep their chin up (Elizabeth George, the best-selling mystery author, find it helps to read through old journals chronicling her self-doubt when she hits the same feelings with a new project). Maybe all artists just carry on, feeling as though they are bumbling through, never quite sure if they can pull off the next trick. 

 And maybe that’s where some of the beauty of art comes: from recognizing the brilliance that can come forth from searching, trying, and pushing on.

Writing the Tough Stuff.

I am starting a second mystery novel and I have a new character. I really like her. I don’t know everything about her yet, but I know that she has long black hair and she is in university. Or maybe college. I know her name and I think that she will work in a coffee shop, have tattoos, and love photography. And I know she will die. 

I didn’t have any clear ideas about who my characters would be when I started writing my first mystery novel. I hadn’t decided much about age or background or income or experiences. The only direction I had was that each character needed to serve a purpose: someone had to be killed,

someone had to find out who did it, I needed some characters to reveal certain clues, and I needed some characters to raise the stakes.  

I also followed mystery writer Louise Penny’s advice and created characters that I’d want as friends (http://www.louisepenny.com/getpublished.htm ). If you have to spend

hours with your character, creating and revising and editing, it may as well be someone you would naturally choose to spend hours with. Your character should be someone you would want to spend early mornings or late nights with (or middle of the day or whenever it is you happen to write).

Let me clarify this point. I don’t want to be friends with a sociopath. But sociopath’s aren’t all that interesting anyhow. Interesting characters are complex- there are likable parts in all of us, just as there are unlikable parts. There are good choices and bad choices. There are tough situations where all a character can do is his or her best. And that’s what makes us like them. They are human, and we identify with their humanity.

That’s the hard part about writing murder mysteries: I will create characters and because I created these people, I will care for them. Even if these characters are nearly completely unlikable, I’ll still enjoy them somewhat. There will be a phrase or a quirk or an insight and I’ll feel compassion for them. If they are the heroes, they will face danger. And if they are the murder victims, they will die.

The Slow Ride

I might be very slow. I’m not sure. It took me about 8 months of waking up early and writing for about 2 hours every weekday morning before I had a 350 page first draft of a mystery novel. Then it took another two months of reading it with a pen in hand. Then another few months to make those changes on the computer. Then the draft went to a few trusted friends and family members. Then I made some more changes. All said and done, it has been about a year and a half since I started.

I say I’m slow partially because I am truly impatient. I’ve heard that great art takes time and Rome wasn’t built in a day, but I believe that I should be able to get it done faster. I also started thinking about speedy writing after reading an interview with Alexander McCall Smith. In this interview, McCall Smith said that when he writes, very little is changed or edited ( see http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/qa-alexander-mccall-smith/article1975514/singlepage/#articlecontent). He writes his stories perfectly the first time. This might be the reason why he publishes a book each year. 

I say I’m slow because the process of writing takes a while. Even in university I started weeks in advance. The most important thing for me was getting something down on the page. I could always work with something once it was there—even if it was only a paragraph and it was full of swear words temporarily substituting for actual words I couldn’t remember or ideas I knew I needed to include. Once I had that, I could expand, revise, cut the cussing, and produce a respectable piece of work.

The same pattern applied when I wrote my mystery. I started by knowing that a young man would be killed. At the time of death he would be wearing a bathing suit, and the killer would have poured water over the body. I knew this much and then I began to figure out who this victim was. Then I wondered who would have found him, and who would have cared.

Everything was in point form. I started to write little chunks of dialogue. Then I wrote a few more characters and a few more scenes. I only wrote the scenes that felt easy to write—I didn’t force myself to write the next chronological scene or to stick with only one character . I did this until I couldn’t think of anything else to write—it took 121 pages. All that was done by hand: ink on sketchbook paper. 

Next I tackled the process of putting the scribbles onto the computer screen. As I transcribed, the scenes filled out. I filled in the unaccounted hours between scenes and the little clues that would make the revelations credible. Characters solidified. Dialogue became more natural. Small jokes were inserted as were the tiny details that would add life to the page. When I got feedback, I made those changes too. I improved my grammar. I switched phrasing to make sentences sound better. I connected characters, I deleted repeated words. And for the most part I reall enjoyed it. 

Now I’m contemplating writing another mystery; a second story in the lives of my characters. I’ve got my sketchbook ready and I’ll go shopping to get the right type of pen. I forget who said it, but I read once that writing is like driving in the fog: you can only see as far as your headlights. This image fits my own writing process very well. My own, individual, wildly curving, multi-layered, drive-off-a-cliff process. But I’ve done it before, so this time I just have to remember the basic direction of my route.