‘New writers … dive in’

Mired in research? Fearful of failure? Procrastination is the writer’s biggest enemy. Fight it, urges Jill Dawson – a series of false starts is better than no start at all

Nabokov called it “the first little throb”. The first inkling of the novel you want to write. He was speaking of Lolita, of course. Something that beats beneath everything else; something troubling, insistent, itchy and physical: pain and desire mixed. In his earlier novella The Enchanter, which feels in some ways like an early draft of Lolita, the protagonist speaks of his “hopeless yearning to extract something from beauty, to hold it still for an instant, to do something with it”.

Maybe that’s what the desire to write a novel is. Trying to hold something still, pin it down, stick things (words) to paper. Maybe … but plenty of writers, and I’m definitely in this group, couldn’t tell you at the start why they wanted to write a particular novel, only that they feel this throb powerfully.

I urge new writers to dive in. There is never a perfect time to write your novel, though writing students seem to believe there is. Begin today. That has been my consistent advice in the 20 or so years I’ve been writing, or teaching writing, or talking about writing.

I can, of course, see the temptations of not beginning. Chiefly, not beginning sustains the belief that you are gifted, that the novel – when you one day get round to writing it – will surpass all others, that you will suffer no rejections, that it will be published at once and be thereafter visible in every bookshop you step into, that you will never suffer a bad review or sit at a dinner party and hear the question: “So, should I have heard of you?”

Not beginning protects you from the disappointment – no, shame – of reading what you have written and finding it rubbish. It also prevents you from an equally disturbing possibility: discovering that you can write. What then have you been doing all those years? Success or failure can both be avoided by never starting at all – this then is the spell that procrastination casts. How to step out from under it?

The writers I know are all obsessive. The unpublished ones obsess over getting published; the rest about “this crazy obsessive business of trying to be a good writer” (in the words of American novelist Richard Yates). You could try to put this compulsive trait to good use. Yes, you might need to start with some research, but you don’t have to spend years on this before feeling ready to begin. You can also research alongside the writing, making the most of your obsessive qualities, which will keep the material fresh and give you something to do on the days when writing doesn’t go well. While writing The Great Lover I reread the poems and letters of Rupert Brooke over and over, which did indeed change the structure of the novel (I’d never intended to include Brooke’s voice). Surprise in fiction can be a pleasure for you as well as the reader. And conversely, if you’re bored, your reader will be too.

Shouldn’t you complete the research, plot it out, know where it’s going before you put finger to key? I know there are writers who work this way, but not being one of them, I can’t tell you about that method. It might suit you. But so might mine.

There is much anxiety created in new writers about writing the beginning of their novel, how the first line has to grab the reader’s attention, how they must open with a vivid scene or phrase, that kind of thing. Reading wonderful opening lines makes it look easy and implies that there is a formula for this – shock the reader by opening with: “Mother died today, or maybe yesterday, I don’t know” (Camus’s The Outsider), or stun them with lyrical virtuosity: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”

Brilliant opening lines rarely come to the writer the minute she or he begins, so why worry, especially since it’s much easier now than in Nabokov’s day to make changes to a manuscript. The perfect opener is more likely to suggest itself after you have many more words on paper, once you know the characters well, once the whole thing feels thicker and juicier and more developed.

Whatever your level of experience, writing a novel usually feels like a series of false starts. When we begin the voice sounds wrong, the characters don’t “come through”, the tone is wrong, even the year and the place you’ve put them in, all feel wrong. But how can you, the writer, know these things, see them, until you’ve put words on the page, taken a look at them? This is drafting. Resisting producing a draft means not producing anything at all (“Perfection is terrible … it tamps the womb”, wrote Plath). Is the prose alive or dead? That’s all you need to know to carry on.

Most draft novels, like old bread, would benefit from topping and tailing. But you can’t do that until there’s something solid, some dry crusts to slice away. A rough start is unavoidable; a warm-up. There’s no way to write a novel without being willing to do this.

The trick is not to care that it all gets pared away, not to mourn those thousands of abandoned words, those endless new beginnings. Weak beginnings are inevitable and essential. The first little throb turns into a steady pulse, a heartbeat, the tapping of keys. It’s an austere and repetitive service, the writing of a novel. But, of course, there is joy, too.

Jill Dawson is the author of seven novels and editor of six anthologies of poetry and short stories. Twice nominated for the Orange prize, she has held many fellowships and currently runs a mentoring project for new writers called Gold Dust (gold-dust.org.uk). Her latest novel, Lucky Bunny, is published by Sceptre