The Calamity of Novel Revision
Each piece in the first section of Renee Gladman’s Calamities begins with the phrase I began the day. In one calamity, she writes about her novel in progress.
“I began the day looking into the infinity of the revision of my novel in progress. In fact, I had just exclaimed, ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to start over,’ into a pre-dawn morning, when space expanded and I found myself in this infinitude. The novel, it was a wreck. I would have to begin again. I said this and looked at the screen for affirmation. ‘I have written sixty pages,’ I said, exasperated. ‘Houses of Ravicka, are you there?’ It was hard to call the book out in this way, as it wasn’t too long ago that I’d called the name of another book — asked it to step out of its hiding place, its refusal place, and come to me — and not only did that book never appear but I’d already written another book about its not appearing. I couldn’t even call for Houses without it feeling like a rerun, and it was this — not being able to call its name but still looking at it, waiting for it — that gave shape to the infinitude, which was ultimately something beyond shape, which couldn’t possibly have a shape and also be infinite. And yet, I clearly sat in a vastness (arguably a kind of shape), my pages blowing about, but never blowing about so much that I lost sight of them (they seemed to go no farther than the horizon: another shape). For months I ran after them, but pages floating so far away just begin to look like sky (infinity).”
I read Calamities near the end of a lengthy revision process guided by The Last Draft by Sandra Scofield, which I found incredibly helpful. After writing another draft at warp speed in April, I printed out the manuscript on actual paper (finally grasping the notion of pages, not just word count!) and spent May and most of June reading it, marking it up in pencil, making a list of things to work on and think about, and keeping a revision journal.
At the end of June I made a fresh outline and pasted it and the bits of the novel I wanted to keep into Scrivener, feeling good about tackling the next draft. It was such a productive spring, mostly thanks to The Last Draft, but also because my view of what the novel is about was sharpened by the way the coronavirus was changing the world. It became easier to see what it was really all about.
Then I spent July working so much at my job that I had no energy to spare for writing, and I haven’t touched the novel since.
“Could it be that every ten years you simply started something that couldn’t be finished, that was impossible to finish because the person you needed to be to write the book never settled into form, or the form came and went while you were off teaching or buying furniture in a little city that stayed little the whole time you were there?”
I don’t know when I’ll get back to it. Maybe not until September. I was about to type when things calm down, but that sounds ridiculous when my life is, in fact, as calm as can be. Steady job, no kids, a safe home, a great partner, no systemic oppression or violence.
I could be working on the novel instead of this or instead of the newsletter or instead of reading five books at a time. (If I didn’t make time for reading, I would never write.) But it doesn’t feel like the right time. I’m too angry and aggrieved, too fixated on the problems I need to solve at work and the problems of our ever-wretched world which I can never solve. But maybe the problems of a novel are in fact exactly what I need.