Sculpting Wet Clay

So many analogies with other art forms are appropriate when considering writing as art. Painting with words. A verbal symphony. Recently I have spent several weeks wrestling with a chapter in my new novel. This book has been difficult to write from the word go, but this chapter just wouldn’t come together. I knew more or less how it needed to end, but getting to there from the beginning was like swimming through treacle.

In that previous paragraph I notice I have applied two non-artistic metaphors to the process of writing: wrestling and swimming (through treacle). I hope when I mention wrestling this doesn’t conjure up images of the theatre that appears on our televisions. Or sumo wrestling. Actually, I hope it conjures up no visual images at all. I can think of no form of wrestling which is even remotely pleasing to the eye. No. Think of wrestling with the lid of a stubborn jar, or a flat-pack piece of furniture. Something that just won’t bloody work!

As for swimming through treacle ... Well, I’ve never actually tried it, though I can’t imagine it would be very pleasant.

The image I actually had in mind when I began this post was of writing as a form of sculpture. Here is a piece of clay that we must keep wet, pushing it here, pulling it there, slicing away this, adding that. This is what writing sometimes feels like to me. I have a lump of something that I must mould and shape. Perhaps I see the final form inside this lump, as a sculptor might see the man in the chunk of marble. But drawing out that shape ... That is difficult and time consuming. This is how physical writing can sometimes be for me.

I think I have the shape of that chapter correct now. On to the next.