Having recently read Stephen King's On Writing and how he typically writes 2000 words a day I've been pondering just how precious I am with my choice of words when writing.

I'm currently in a phase of researching popular writing which is one reason why I'm working my way through a number of King's novels and the thing that I've noticed is that he doesn't seem to be too precious with his words. Don't get me wrong there are many passages that could easily stand up against anything written by the most celebrated literary giants but on the whole he seems to have a mish mash approach. I can easily see how he manages to write his quota per day in not seeming to be overly fussy with the words he chooses.

This is something I really struggle with not just finding the right words but having to have them 'feel' right before I'm happy enough to leave them alone. At times it can take days, weeks even, to craft a paragraph or even a single sentence. And, again, I'm not talking about overly intellectualised and flowery prose but often simple sentences are sections.

Does anyone else have this problem? Just how precious do you tend to be with your words and in the end does it matter so long as the story holds? Does anyone have any tips for overcoming it/workarounds?

Well, the most poetry Yeats ever wrote in a day was six words.

My basic discipline is to write 1000 first-draft words in four hours before I have to go and cope with the rest of life, and I've been known to drive myself to write another 500 in the evening, in the days when the children went to bed before I did. They get much revised (the words, that is - no hope of revising the children, I fear) but for me that's later in the process. But yes, it can take ages to decide that the best way for the sentence to be is, 'He walked over the hill'. The right word isn't at all necessarily the obscure word, or the fancy word, or the dozen words, but it may take just as long to find.

With a lot of good popular fiction writing the best writing is what doesn't get in the way of the story. Sometimes it's more original than that - as you've obviously found with King. It's just that it doesn't need to be for the novel to work: it's primarily functional, if you like. With literary work, part of the pleasure is in how it's written, not just in what it says; indeed, how it's written may counteract how easy it is to apprehend the story, which is when some people start resenting it, I suspect.

Emma

I think you're certainly right there Emma. Many 'mainstream' and popular authors often concentrate more on the story than how it's told. It certainly explains how the likes of James Patterson, Dean Koontz, Stephen King etc can knock out four or five in the time it takes others to write just one.

I try to knock out a whole chapter - usually rough as hell - then spend another hour twisting and battering and wrestling the bastard into some reasonable form. I can't churn chapter after chapter in first draft form. I have to neaten the edges before moving on, but I don't get too hung up on perfecting each chapter because there's a pretty high chance that by the end of the novel that that chapter will be revised beyond recognition or scrapped.

Colin

I usually write very slowly and for Nanowrimo am writing very quickly - and although I write genre fiction also write flash - where every word has to pay its way and be crafted.

So it's been different - but I find yes I can make the 2000+ word count - often in 2/3 hours and while there will be lots of editing to do - 11 days in I am getting better at it - finding there is time to reshape sentences as I write.

And yes, now I have a clearer idea of where the story is going it is going faster.

In a way I am doing this on purpose as an exercise to get away from obsessing over every word - and so far it seems to be working.

Dont get me wrong - it's a real mess but I think has a lot of raw energy fuelled by the speed - so maybe the way we write is habit?

Having the necessity to 'let go' - or possibly in SK's case the confidence - I like the freedom a lot - and I'm finding that I get further with shaping the story when I'm not shaping every word.

Of course not having time to re read probably helps shape the illusion too?

sarah

I think there's a tale about James Joyce (could be wrong) in which he complains to another that he's only written nine words that day.
'Well', says his listener, 'that's quite good for you'...
'Yes,' replies Joyce...'but I don't know which order they go in...'
Ah, the lot of a poet!
x
tc
(who's just spent two weeks on two five-line verses - and they're not even the main part of the poem...)

With a lot of good popular fiction writing the best writing is what doesn't get in the way of the story.

Shouldn't that be true of all writing, whether commercial or literary?

I'm just doing a speed-revision of a manuscript ... suddenly I've realised that even though I was working hard to make sure the writing didn't get in the way of the story, often in trying to find an original and more evocative way of expressing something I realise it has. Thus I'm crossing out painstakingly crafted sentences and substituting 'He walked over the hill' (courtesy of Emma). Wish I'd realised that before the previous five drafts of the novel.

Andrea

But if part of the pleasure of literary fiction is the actual substance of the writing, you may want to assume greater patience in the reader for finding out 'what happens next', because they're getting the pleasure of 'what oft was said but ne'er so well express'd' along the way. Just because a picture is dramatic doesn't mean we might not want to get closer and look at the brushwork, or someone's expression. Some of the story is in that brushwork, and we want to see it there.

And one of the differences I think between literary and whatever you want to call the other kind of fiction, is that 'what happens next' is itself more broadly defined. In popular fiction it might be ramapant sex or a spaceship blowing up or a spectacular row between best friends. In lit fic it might be any of those, but it also might be three pages that chart the definitive moment when someone decides to leave their spouse, or a child realises that her teacher is not what she seems.

No one could say that To The Lighthouse gallops along at the pace of a Dick Francis, but I, for one, wouldn't sacrifice a single word.

When you are trying to decide if 'the man walked over the hill; is all that's wanted, some of it is to do with pace. I've become very aware in my last couple of novels of the rhythm of the patter of different elements through a chapter: dialogue, narration, action, contemplation, say. Which way you chose to write something can have a lot to do with what's gone before and is coming after, I think.

Emma

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I think in the end, if you're having to decide to write something more originally or evocatively, you may well make the wrong decision about which bits to write how. The rhythm you feel within the novel - voice, point of view, character, pace as I mentioned above - should dictate how you write something, not an external decision to make it more or less whatever. The better you feel the story in your gut/soul/instinct, the less you have to decide: it just happens.

I think there is a (weakish) case for getting ten year olds to use a thesaurus to make their writing more 'interesting', in the cause of enlarging their vocabularies, though it's better done by getting them to read more. But it doesn't apply to grown ups.

Some of the story is in that brushwork, and we want to see it there.

There we disagree. I don't want to see it. To me the best prose is that which conveys a moment, a feeling, an event as simply and unobtrusively as possible. I like a writer to assume that I have, being human, felt grief, rage, love, passion, fear and so therefore conjure it for me with a few evocative, deft strokes rather than spell it out to me at length. It's a personal thing and why I no longer read literary fiction or want to write it.

Regarding the issue of what-happens-next, it's not something I'd referred to but I like things to happen in a novel in the shortest space of time it can take to fully convey it to me and engage me in it. Again, I prefer the few evocative, deft strokes and that's the other reason why I no longer read literary fiction or want to write it. Again it's a personal thing.

And by the way, that doesn't mean I only read commercial fiction, although I read that too. I just avoid anything obviously literary and likely to win the Booker Prize.

It was never a decision to write something more evocatively, more originally, just a feeling that I should. Now I've realised that, barring cliche, many people have said it before that way because that's how it's best conveyed and who am I to argue? They were right. If you like to read and want to write the kind of prose that appeals to me, that is.

Andrea

But my point about brushwork is that you don't have to look at it: it doesn't stop you appreciating the picture as a whole, but adds an extra pleasure. I'm perfectly happy for people to read TMOL without thinking at all about what words are in what order, but only about what's going to happen next. In fact I assume most readers do that. But if a reader wants to get up close, I can promise them that every word - even if it is 'the man walked over the hill' - is not just a good word, but the best word I can find for the job. And having subjected my own work to that discipline, I do find that I'm impatient with other work that isn't operating to that standard, whether the result is spare or lavish in its language.

Emma

But my point about brushwork is that you don't have to look at it

but when you say

we want to see it there

that does imply we want to look. In fact, it actually says so

But if a reader wants to get up close, I can promise them that every word - even if it is 'the man walked over the hill' - is not just a good word, but the best word I can find for the job.

I agree absolutely on this. The latter I've only just realised, which is what prompted my initial post.

Andrea

Yes, should have made myself clear - when I said 'we want to see it' I meant those of us who value the writing in a novel for its inherent qualities as well as for being a vehicle for the story.

I think, too, that though peering at the brushwork may be a minority taste, how and which paint is put on the canvas still has an effect on people who are only consciously looking at the whole picture. If that weren't the case, no one would rate Van Gogh over a fifteenth-rate greetings-card painting of a starry sky or a chair in a room. But they do, and even if they couldn't tell you why it stirs their blood so much they'll stand for two hours in a museum queue to see the original, the brushwork has a lot - technically I suppose everything - to do with it.

Emma

In response to the original question: very precious. Which is why NaNoWriMo is such a great exercise. Ok, so their website is more of a distraction and procrastination device than a useful writing tool (I could spend hours getting lost on that site, if I had greater patience), but the challenge of producing 2000 words a day, even if you know that you're going to scrap 1500 of that count when you do the rewrite, is an invigorating challenge. And before you know it, you've got the raw materials right there, on the page before you, fresh and unfettered and waiting to be moulded into something great!

One of the best pieces of advice that I've received when it comes to writer's block is this: the thing won't get written unless you write it. As someone who loves to luxuriate in the "dreaming" period before the writing actually starts (imagining characters, devising plot, jotting down random bits of information to use along the way, etc.) sometimes I find I'm "afraid" to write because the words that come out might not live up to the intended idea. Motoring through and producing words - any words - is a great way to vanquish that fear.

Yes, 'don't get it right, get it written'. So true.

Emma

To me the best prose is that which conveys a moment, a feeling, an event as simply and unobtrusively as possible.

Me too, Fitzgerald I would hold up here, translucent style and literary to the core, but I enjoy visible style for its own sake too, given a level of brilliance.

It's maybe wrong to confuse lit fic with visible style or even so-called literary device. Camus is an example of uber-literary fiction where the prose is so bare it makes Orwell look like Dickens. I'd define lit fic in terms of the issues it deals with rather than stylistic quality, and in particular I would say that one aspect of lit fic is that it's always concerned more with matters beyond the storyline than with the storyline itself.