SHUT UP

by Rob Lopresti

This is an editorial reply to the blog I wrote last week, and with which I entirely disagree. So there. – Rob Lopresti

Due to an unexpectedly sharp turn on Employment Street a friend of mine recently found herself with some unwanted spare time. She decided to write a novel, her first serious attempt at fiction.

She asked me some questions and I gave her what advice I could. But at some point I told her to stop talking to me about the book. It wasn’t that I was bored. I was afraid that she was hurting her ability to finish what she was starting.

You see, no matter how much fun writing may feel some of the time, there will inevitably be times when you just have to stick in the shovel and pile the words on the page. It’s work and it feels like it.

In those hard stretches there are two motivators that keep you going. One is that whole fame-and-fortune thing. I, of course, am not interested in such matters, but people who do care about money and glory tell me those things can be powerful motivatora. The other one is what I call the narrative urge, the desire to tell a story. You see it in pre-schoolers, eagerly telling about the cat throwing up and other vital news. You see it in old folks too.

But while the urge never goes away, there is only so much you can muster for each individual tale. If you start telling people about the plot of the book you are writing you may be leaving your game in the locker room, as they say. If the bottle leaks the champagne gets flat.

Flashback

Now some of you nitpickers might possibly remember that last week in this very space I blathered on about a story I was attempting to write. Am I committing a case of do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do?

Well, maybe. But I don’t think so. All I really told you about the plot was that it involved two cops investigating a suicide. That’s not enough to give away the store. So, if you will excuse me, I will get back to my detectives. They’re just discovered that the reason for the suicide was — well, that would be telling.