I flew to London last night and tumbled off the plane before dawn.  I know I must have dozed off at some point, but I don’t think I had many consecutive minutes of sleep.

Stumbled to UK Border Patrol where I stood at the back of a queue of several hundred people waiting for three agents.  We were all half asleep.  The scene was like something from a Beckett play.  Constant shuffling, no visible progress.  Signs that said “No Exit” and “Queue formation study in progress.”  Did I dream that?  No I think that’s what it said.

“Purpose of your visit, madam?”

Huh?

“Oh!  I’m speaking at the Wellcome Collection.”

“When is that?”

“Tonight.”

“Do you do that often?”

“Yes.  No!  What do you mean?”

“You speak often in the UK?”

“No.  It’s my first time.”

“What is your profession?”

“Writer.”

“Are they paying you?”

Yes.  No.  Sometimes.  “Just for the trip.”

“To the UK?”

“Yes.”

“You may go then.”

This is what I’ve seen so far of London:  The pillow on the bed in my hotel room.  Where like a pillow on a bed, the jet lagged rest their reclining heads. I hope by tonight I can remember what my book was about.

I have just ordered a dollhouse for my seven year old daughter.  It’s a center entrance Colonial–white with dark green trim.  I also bought a white porch, sold separately. 

We’re excited.  7 rooms, and they’re already wallpapered!  I still have the furniture from my childhood dollhouse, so we’ll have plenty to put inside.

My own dollhouse was a tall, slightly crooked town house that my father and I built.  It wasn’t perfect, but it was a lot of fun.  We built it from plans in a book, which also specified three flights of tiny stairs.  All those stairs!  Those were way too hard for beginning woodworkers.  I thought it was silly to spend a lot of time on stairs.  They’d take up so much space, and they were so difficult to install!  I said to myself, “If my dolls need to go up to the bedroom, or down to the kitchen, I’ll just pick them up and move them!”

Thus, I became a novelist instead of an architect.

I’m giving a talk on Sunday at the Writers’ Conference of the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.  Naturally I’m trying to think of words of inspiration and comfort as well as practical advice. 

But it’s funny how the mind works:

What I want to say is:  Go for it!
What I keep thinking is:  Just do it.

What I want to say is:  Sit down and write that book.
What I keep thinking is:   Sit down and do some serious reading first.

What I want to say is:  Don’t give up.
What I keep thinking is:  Never give up your day job.

What I want to say is:  You can learn a lot from a creative writing class.
What I keep thinking is: Creativity cannot be taught.

What I want to say is: Don’t be discouraged.  Follow your dream.
What I keep thinking is:  When you’re discouraged, take that as a sign to dream up something better.

What I want to say is: You all have something to say.
What I keep thinking is: But not everything you have to say is of general interest.

What I want to say is:  Here are 10 simple rules to write by.
What I keep thinking is:  There are no rules.

I think I need to tell them all of this.

Is it possible to mix inspiration with tough love?

I’ll find out at my talk!

I have a friend who says that she gets the most writing done when it’s nasty out.  Dark.  Cold.  Wet.  Bring it on.  She loves it when the days get shorter and she has to hunker down inside.  Why?  She’s undistracted by thoughts of walking, running, or cycling.

Me?  I don’t feel especially productive when it rains.  I just feel wet and chilly.  As for hunkering down–there’s a fine line between curling up to write, and curling up to sleep.  Zzzzzzz . . .

This looks like the last time I’ll be seeing my book before it goes to the copy editor.  I’m sending it in on Friday and then suddenly the huge project I’ve been developing for two and a half years will be out of my hands.

It’s strange to look back and think about the curious process of writing a novel.  Every writer has his or her own methods, but in my case, the work went like this:

6 months research and floundering
1 year to write and rewrite the first 100 pages
9 months to write and rewrite the next 475 pages
3 months to revise and cut about 80 pages

It’s possible to optimize many jobs, but I don’t think it’s possible with novels.  They have their own rhythms–sometimes slow, sometimes fast, and the only rule I’ve found is: you just have to put your head down and keep trying.

Once when my children were small and I was nervous about a deadline, a woman said to me: how many pages do you have to write by June? 

“About 300,” I told her.

“Okay, so you have nine months.” She did a quick calculation.  “All you have to do is write X pages a week.  When I was in college I used to do that all the time for my research papers.  You can crank that out.”

“Yes.”  I sighed.  “But they have to be good.”

She was quite offended at this response.  “My college papers were excellent!  I was a straight A student.”

At another point, at a reading, I explained that sometimes it’s frustrating to try to write a long novel when you get interrupted all the time.  “A novel isn’t like knitting you can just pick up at odd moments.”

Three hands shot up.  There was a group of serious knitters in the audience.  “A Fair Isle sweater takes a lot of concentration!” one woman said.

I should have known better!  I can’t knit at all, although I come from a family of great knitters. 

I have learned from all this to embrace the odd rhythms of novel writing and complain at my own risk!

I’ve learned to love the work in all its phases and moods: excitement at beginning, concentration in the middle, delight at the end.

I’ve had a nice piece of news.  Intuition has been short listed for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize in the UK.  This is a new prize which will be given to a book of fiction or non-fiction with the theme of medicine, illness, or scientific research.

Here is the press release:

http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/Media-office/Press-releases/2009/WTX056745.htm

When I told my seven year old daughter that I was going to London at the end of the month for the festivities, she said thoughtfully, “You should wear something fancy.  I think you should look in the closet for your wedding dress.”

I’ve been thinking about “Robinson Crusoe” lately–that great early novel of survival and spiritual regeneration.

“Robinson Crusoe” doesn’t have the variety or humor or venom! of “Gulliver’s Travels” but I find it deeply moving.  A castaway must find a way to start over.  He must find water and protect himself from wild animals.  He must nourish his body.  But most importantly he must find a way to reform his soul.  Very Protestant!  And also very human.

Crusoe proves himself an apt farmer, forager and goatherd, and it’s fascinating to read the detailed account of his material achievements on the island.  But Defoe presents Crusoe’s spiritual progress as slower and more difficult.  Doubt, fear, and loneliness prove more problematic than hunger or thirst or wayward animals.  Crusoe might build a strong stockade on the island, but it is far more difficult for him to defend his mind against despair.  He might cultivate corn successfully, but he has much more difficulty cultivating a pure and loving heart.

And yet, Crusoe changes slowly.  He remakes himself by reading scripture, by reflecting on his situation, and ultimately by developing a relationship with Friday.  Much has been said about this relationship–master to servant, colonist to indigenous man–but what interests me most is the dialog Crusoe and Friday develop.  It seems to me that in the end Crusoe cannot complete his spiritual journey alone.  He must have a companion and an interlocutor. Defoe has set up a thought experiment, isolating Crusoe and showing how he can provide for himself.  But while Crusoe starts out alone, he does not finish alone.  While he lives in isolation, he depends upon history and religion and technology.  He returns to the wreck of his ship and salvages tools and also a holy bible and he depends upon these remnants of the world he left behind.  He will continue to study these devices, as later he begins to teach. For he is both sovereign and slave in his tiny kingdom, student and instructor, Prospero and Ferdinand, penitent and evangelist, and in taking these dual roles–not one but both–he learns what it means to be a man.

Just emailed my revised draft to my editor.  Phew!!  What a relief. 

Halfway through the final spell check of my 500 plus page document, Microsoft Word crashed!!!  What is wrong with that program?  Sometimes I think Microsoft can’t handle fiction.

Tomorrow is the big day.  I’ve promised my editor that I will email her the revised draft of my novel by 10 am!  I’m feeling happy, jittery, and hyper-alert.  It’s a bit like last minute packing before you go to the airport.  You wake up early remembering little things you should bring.  You unzip a corner of your bag and slip in a toothbrush, and then you decide to bring your black shoes, and a different pair of earrings, and your travel alarm clock.  You zip up your novel and sit on it.  You want everything just right: clean, orderly, unwrinkled before the journey.