Raymond Carver

Have you ever been working on a longer piece of writing, a novel for instance, and just gotten stuck or bogged down? This happened to me, recently, in fact. I had been working on a novel for more than a year and was on the downhill slope with the finish line clearly in sight. Yet, for some unknown reason I was finding it hard to get to my writing desk and finish. It seemed silly, really. I knew the characters, I understood what they all wanted and how they were in conflict, I even knew where the story was heading and had written a draft of the ending (this, by the way may have been my problem but more on that in a later post) but for some reason I just could not get the work done.

I was still writing, all kinds of things in fact: Articles, letters, amusing emails (my curse), and of course blog posts. Yet I was not finishing my novel. At the time, I happened to be in the library and picked up a biography about Raymond Carver. Carver is arguably the best short-story writer the U.S. ever produced. At the time of his death in 1988 he was compared to Anton Chekov. The guy was good, yet he never wrote a novel. The short-story was his form.

The biography was fascinating and in it it described Carver’s main method of writing. He would draft his short stories long-hand on typing paper or legal pads. Generally, he would try and get the first draft down in one sitting, though longer stories might take three or four sessions of writing. Then Carver would set the story aside for a bit and work on something else. He’d come back to his hand written draft a few days later and go through it and make notes and corrections. Later he would type it up and revise as he went. Then, he’d revise again, and again, and again.

Carver once said that when he started putting back the punctuation he had already taken out, he figured the story was done. Early in his career, when he was studying writing under John Gardner at Chico State, he spent an entire term writing and revising one short-story. I was fascinated when I read this in his biography and I thought I’d give his method of short-story writing a try.

I sat down at the kitchen table away from my computer with a stack of slightly crumpled computer paper. I just started writing a story based on something that happened to me when I was nine or ten. I did not try for perfect prose, just to get it down and to write in the voice of that ten year-old kid that I was. It was fiction, but based on my experience. In the end, I was pleased with what I’d accomplished. I placed it aside for a couple days and then re-read it and while it wasn’t bad, I saw how I could improve it during the next step of typing and revising.

The funny thing was, now that I had written that short-story – actually completed a draft – I started to feel motivated to complete my novel draft with the same kind of idea about getting it down and then revising. Maybe it was the act of completing something that had the positive effect. Possibly it was writing in a different voice or a different genre that made the difference. I’m not exactly sure, but it did make a difference.

If you are stuck on a project as I was, try writing a short-story in a different voice, genre, POV, etc… This simple act of completing something can give you benefits you may not even be aware of. If you try this, let me know how it goes with a comment or an email.

Stop by www-creative-writing-mfa.org for more ideas about writing and for information on writing programs.