Writing is like driving

“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

I live by EL Doctorow’s comment, probably because I know how easy it is to be daunted by the enormity of the task. When you begin, it can seem impossible that you’ll achieve what you’ve set out to do. That you’ll gradually weave in the information that will build and resonate in the reader’s head.

How will you hold the threads together through so many months of writing? How will you drip-feed information, resisting the temptation to spew it all out in an orgy of exposition – before you forget, or so that people will understand what’s in your head?

If you think about the process like driving, it makes it easier somehow. Okay, I do believe you have to know that you’re driving to Cape Town, or you might end up in Botswana. And that’s a different trip.

It’s more or less how I write. I can usually see about two chapters ahead really clearly. The rest is misty and indistinct. I do know my direction, but not the whole route with any great clarity.

The chapter you’re writing will inform the next couple. It will become clear that you have to continue weaving in scraps about your character’s past, bring back another,  and clarify something you’ve been teasing readers with for some time.

If you try to see further ahead, you can easily become panicked. Or, let me amend that: I can become panicked.

Sometimes you will get a flash of insight for a later chapter. That’s why you need to carry around a notebook or a pile of index cards. If ideas come while I’m writing, I jot them down beneath the chapter I’m tackling, under a heading: For later.

When I complete that chapter, I transfer all those notes to the next chapter, and consult my “later” notes before I start writing again, to see whether they’ve become relevant.