To look back at all past work induces nausea, but the first twenty pages in particular being heart palpitations. It’s like taking a tour of a cell in which you were once incarcerated.
—Zadie Smith, “That Crafty Feeling”
I think many of us, maybe most of us, or possibly even everyone who lets themselves think about it deeply enough, have felt this feeling about something we’ve created. Although feeling like I’m looking at it as a former prison cell isn’t exactly how I’d put it, that feeling is unique to everyone, and her image conveys how powerful that feeling is.
I have an almost four-hour drive to work. (Fortunately I only have to do it a few times a month.) When I’m coming home from a 4-6 day stretch of work, I listen to podcasts the whole time. Mentally, I’m empty and my brain is ready to refill.
But I noticed a while back that when I’ve been off for several days and it’s time for me to make that drive back to work, I usually keep the radio off for the first hour or two, and sometimes the whole time. When I was at home, I was able to reconnect with the characters I’ve been writing about and the story they’re playing around in or suffering through. And then, being pulled away from that big playground, I didn’t really want to leave them just yet. So I’d spend that first hour or two on the road letting them fade away slowly as I mentally shifted back into the real world. So for me, it’s not like a prison, but a big resort when the season ends and it empties out for a while.
The looking back at past work with nausea part is close, though. Now that my first novel is finally getting published and I’m having to look through the manuscript, I can see plenty of places I’d have written it differently if I were writing it today. Some of them are minor stylistic choices, some of them structural decisions, others considerations about pacing (sometimes I think I nailed it exactly the way I wanted, sometimes I wonder that the hell I was thinking… but both of them are thoughts about the same thing).
Even so, nausea isn’t exactly the right sentiment, either. Ride On is by far the book that I’ve picked over the most (14 major revisions). There are plenty of places that make me feel like I’m looking at an old yearbook picture and glad I don’t wear my hair that way or wear clothes like that anymore, but none that make me cringe. Instead, when I get to the end of it yet again, I feel happy. The only thing I’d set out to do when I started writing it was to write a book I’d want to read. I’ve read it start to finish almost twenty times now, and I can say that I managed to do just that.
I don’t think I could write that book again. The final version is twice the length of the first draft, and only about half of what was in the first draft survived, so only 25% of it made it to the end. It was written by the me of five years ago and revised by the me of four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, and last year. In a way, it doesn’t have one author: it has half a dozen, all of them who happen to share a name and a body with me.
The me who sat down at the keyboard five years ago could have written absolutely anything. That’s what he came up with. I’m sure once it’s been on the shelves five years, I’ll pick it up and see things the current me would have done differently, too. By then, it should be sitting alongside the next four, too, and I’m sure I’ll feel the same way about Eileen’s book (book five) then as I feel about Ride On now.
Neil Peart once said that whenever he’s asked which Rush album is his favorite, he always says, “The last one,” because he feels like they grow as a band with every one. That doesn’t mean the earlier ones were bad, so as much as I understand Smith’s sentiment and I admire how powerfully she conveyed her image, I don’t think I’ll ever feel nauseous about anything I’ve written. I want Ride On to be the best thing I’ve ever written… until the second book comes out. And then the third. And so on.
Last week: Ernest Chausson shoots straight for the heart
Next week: A St. Patrick’s Day clover from William Butler Yeats
See the index for what’s been posted and what’s to come.
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