Writing Is Rewriting, Right?

The past week or so has not been especially productive novel-wise or otherwise. I got thrown for a few loops. I'll describe one.

I went to see the writer Richard Ford, whose work I admire immensely. (Clearly, I'm not alone in my admiration. Ford won a Pulitzer for "Independence Day" and the whole Frank Bascombe trilogy is prizeworthy as far as I'm concerned.) After David Straitharn read the beginning of "The Lay of the Land," beautifully I might add, the host did a Q&A with Ford and then the audience asked questions. Not surprisingly, Ford charmed the hell out of everybody. He was droll, unpredictable and down-to-earth. At times he was abrupt, verging on peevish.

His work is so meaty and insightful and his language is so thoughtful and deliberate that it's hard to imagine that he just tosses this stuff off all burnished and lovely the first time around. Coming off of my month-long bout with "Show and Tell" née "Shitty First Draft," I couldn't help but wonder how he got from a SFD to the published product. So I asked.

I began by telling him how much I admired his writing for its precision and careful observation--or words to that effect. I mentioned Anne Lamott so that he didn't think I was just pulling the idea of shitty first drafts out of my ass. Turns out there are no shitty first drafts for Ford. In fact, he practically sniffed at the idea. He sounded a tad offended at the suggestion that someone would write with the thought that it would be shitty.

Writing is rewriting, right? Apparently not so much for Richard Ford. He may move a paragraph or a scene, he said, but that's really it. "Really?" I asked. "Tell me your legs are made of clay," I begged. I actually said that. I felt as if he'd stuck a pin in the balloon that carried me through WriMo. I felt chastised, as if I was missing the whole point of writing. In the fullness of time, I came to hear his answer differently.

Found out later that he keeps a notebook where he gathers string and develops his ideas. I'm told he even revises his notes and that he commits the notes to memory so that when he sits down to write, he knows where he's going. No outline needed. Of course he line edits. Everybody line edits. That goes without saying.

My method of taking notes and rewriting those notes, refining it till the picture becomes clearer, is sort of similar to his. To me it's simplest and just makes sense. I've been thinking about these characters and ideas for a long time, and I've collected string, but it's scattered in a lot of places. Ideally, I would have gathered the string in one place before I started writing on November 1. But because I decided on October 31 that I would do NaNoWriMo, I didn't give myself much of chance to build on that scattered groundwork, hence the exaggerated shitty first draftiness of the novel.

I take Ford's larger point, which he stated clearly. He wants to enjoy what he's doing each day and part of what makes it enjoyable, he said, is writing well. (What happens on the crummy days, when he's not enjoying himself?) I'm surprised to say that sometimes I enjoyed myself even when I wasn't writing my best. The act of writing was pleasurable.

More on Ford and enjoyment in a future post perhaps. Right now, I'm going to rewrite this post.