Anna's comment is priceless! Thank you again for sharing the process of a writer's writer, Dougald. In your process, I recognize my own struggle to light the "detonator" that comes and goes, lurking around corners within the verbiage. It takes thousands of words to unearth that primary catalyst stalking cards on a ping pong table; writers are kittens with a ball of twine :)
Yes! I like that ‘detonator’. It answers a question I have often asked myself: why is one piece longer than another; this a few paragraphs, that twenty pages, the thing on the table a whole book. How do we decide the distance travelled? Now I know: the size of that initial explosion, its ‘concentrated force’, is what decides. Big bang or little bang!
Much of what we create is written against something; the inspiration, it is a feeling, to defend one’s mental territory, repel the enemy. The public sphere a battlefield where ideas are the soldiers. Expose their arguments; overturn their facts; smash their theoretical artillery to pieces. The result a world of destruction; where new weapons proliferate. War the best stimulus to invention.
The bigger the attacking forces, the harder the defence, the more energy goes into fighting: the longer the piece until it becomes a book. I wrote Cartoons after Brexit, when I was appalled by the left-liberal reaction to the vote: people I’d thought on the same side I discovered were not. These no democrats tolerant of opposed opinion. Oh no! All that fine talk was a cover for elitism and condescension: we like the common lot only when they listen to us. What was going on? An explosion of criticism, confusion and insight followed, as I took an entire worldview apart. One hundred thousand words later my big bang came to rest at its last full stop.
After numerous rewrites the book is three times that length.
Here is where the detonation metaphor breaks down. The great demolishers - Marx, Popper, Gellner, Chomsky - are also creative thinkers. On the ruins they build anew. Needing the stimulus of criticism, once the destructive work done they plant new ideas and grow their theories amongst the rubble of the old. Demolition only does part of the job. There has to be a creative spirit. It gets to work once the explosion ends.
Writing. Editing. How much does the former destroy, the latter create….
Profound and funny. I am so excited for this birthing process. You and this book-babe are in my prayers, Dougald. May the world be served by your good labors.
Looking forward to what the whale looks like ;)
I love this way of posting, Dougald. Looking forward to more excepts from your writer’s diary.
Excerpts, that should be…..
Anna's comment is priceless! Thank you again for sharing the process of a writer's writer, Dougald. In your process, I recognize my own struggle to light the "detonator" that comes and goes, lurking around corners within the verbiage. It takes thousands of words to unearth that primary catalyst stalking cards on a ping pong table; writers are kittens with a ball of twine :)
Lovely piece.
Yes! I like that ‘detonator’. It answers a question I have often asked myself: why is one piece longer than another; this a few paragraphs, that twenty pages, the thing on the table a whole book. How do we decide the distance travelled? Now I know: the size of that initial explosion, its ‘concentrated force’, is what decides. Big bang or little bang!
Much of what we create is written against something; the inspiration, it is a feeling, to defend one’s mental territory, repel the enemy. The public sphere a battlefield where ideas are the soldiers. Expose their arguments; overturn their facts; smash their theoretical artillery to pieces. The result a world of destruction; where new weapons proliferate. War the best stimulus to invention.
The bigger the attacking forces, the harder the defence, the more energy goes into fighting: the longer the piece until it becomes a book. I wrote Cartoons after Brexit, when I was appalled by the left-liberal reaction to the vote: people I’d thought on the same side I discovered were not. These no democrats tolerant of opposed opinion. Oh no! All that fine talk was a cover for elitism and condescension: we like the common lot only when they listen to us. What was going on? An explosion of criticism, confusion and insight followed, as I took an entire worldview apart. One hundred thousand words later my big bang came to rest at its last full stop.
After numerous rewrites the book is three times that length.
Here is where the detonation metaphor breaks down. The great demolishers - Marx, Popper, Gellner, Chomsky - are also creative thinkers. On the ruins they build anew. Needing the stimulus of criticism, once the destructive work done they plant new ideas and grow their theories amongst the rubble of the old. Demolition only does part of the job. There has to be a creative spirit. It gets to work once the explosion ends.
Writing. Editing. How much does the former destroy, the latter create….
Profound and funny. I am so excited for this birthing process. You and this book-babe are in my prayers, Dougald. May the world be served by your good labors.