I Learn by Going

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

(from ‘The Waking‘ by Theodore Roethke.)

Writing is a strange business. Last night I killed my babies.

I woke at about 3 am, drenched in sweat, even though it was cool. My head was full of purpose. I knew what to do. I got up, dressed in the dark and staggered through the house to my office. I thought about coffee, I’m always so slow to wake, but there was no time.

My novel, Time & Tyde, something I wrote two books ago, which got lots of attention but no contract, needed fixing. And I knew, at last, what to do. In a daze, I squinted against the glare of the screen, waiting, waiting for everything to boot and load and settle down so I could write.

It started in the wrong place. Time & Tyde is a psychological thriller. I’d never realised before, but now I understood. It was a psychological thriller but it started like a literary novel, beautiful prose, deft brush-strokes to introduce, describe, all those clever phrases, all that lovely rhythm.

I cut it all out. I cut to the chase. I slashed and burned, ploughed the stubble under, and scraped off the topsoil. My lovely opening was landfill. Now I was down to bare earth, and the real opening was revealed at last.

Various readers had told me, but not in any way that made sense. Various writers had pointed the way. The words of Vonnegut in particular had haunted me, “Start as close to the end as possible.” I must have known, somewhere, that I hadn’t done that. Now I had. Now I could sleep.

By 5:30 am I was finished. I went back to bed and slept until 10.