Thursday
May132010
How much aspiration do you need?
Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 8:26AM
One book gone, pretty soon I need to start thinking about another. Authors constantly get asked: where do books come from?
There’s no easy answer. Just a few fragments of clues. I’ll try to assemble some here over the next few days. First though, a general point about books, and I suspect anything else creative too. It’s to do with aspiration. What ambitions do you have for a project? What, in broad, general terms, are you trying to achieve?
I imagine most new writers starting out will have some very simple ones.
All well and good. But really these aren’t aspirations at all. They’re just fundamental objectives in most writing projects any author would like to see come to fruition. What I’m talking about is something much narrower and more specific. With each new book I always set out some very defined ambitions for the project, goals I want to reach when it’s done.
For example, let’s take the current book, The Blue Demon. Like most of my work it’s set in Rome and features the same set of characters. Like most books too it’s unlike its predecessors in some significant ways. As a writer I don’t want to keep walking the same path. I like to move around a little, surprise people. So you could say that one permanent aspiration for every new book is…
But I need something more specific too. In the case of The Blue Demon the objectives included…
Next year’s book is called The Fallen Angel. Again, that’s very different. Here the aspirations included..
I write down these aspirations in my book diary before a word of the actual story is written. Aspirations like these help me focus on the core of the book to come. I try to keep them simple and specific.
There are other, thematic threads that crop up during the writing of the book, more subtle and less general ones. The funny thing is that the latter often shift and disappear entirely during the writing of the book. The general aspirations rarely change. They are, for me, the building blocks of the narrative to come, and absolutely essential.
There’s no easy answer. Just a few fragments of clues. I’ll try to assemble some here over the next few days. First though, a general point about books, and I suspect anything else creative too. It’s to do with aspiration. What ambitions do you have for a project? What, in broad, general terms, are you trying to achieve?
I imagine most new writers starting out will have some very simple ones.
- To finish the blasted thing
- To sell it
- To see it published successfully
All well and good. But really these aren’t aspirations at all. They’re just fundamental objectives in most writing projects any author would like to see come to fruition. What I’m talking about is something much narrower and more specific. With each new book I always set out some very defined ambitions for the project, goals I want to reach when it’s done.
For example, let’s take the current book, The Blue Demon. Like most of my work it’s set in Rome and features the same set of characters. Like most books too it’s unlike its predecessors in some significant ways. As a writer I don’t want to keep walking the same path. I like to move around a little, surprise people. So you could say that one permanent aspiration for every new book is…
- Be different. Stretch yourself.
But I need something more specific too. In the case of The Blue Demon the objectives included…
- Paint a picture of the world of modern Italian politics.
- Link that world with the ancient world of Roman politics, through a little of the story of the Etruscans, and some references to the work of Robert Graves in his Claudius books.
- To reveal, in a very unexpected way, a little more of what has come to shape the character of Nic Costa.
- To produce an ensemble story, one in which my cast of characters take pretty much equal parts.
Next year’s book is called The Fallen Angel. Again, that’s very different. Here the aspirations included..
- Make this a story which is very much Costa’s alone, with him as the central lead character
- Explore the tragic story of a young Roman girl called Beatrice Cenci who was executed in the last sixteenth century for the murder of her abusive father. And ask, in particular, how we would have treated the Cenci case today.
- Focus on a very small geographical area of Rome, as I did in The Garden of Evil. In this case it’s the ghetto.
I write down these aspirations in my book diary before a word of the actual story is written. Aspirations like these help me focus on the core of the book to come. I try to keep them simple and specific.
There are other, thematic threads that crop up during the writing of the book, more subtle and less general ones. The funny thing is that the latter often shift and disappear entirely during the writing of the book. The general aspirations rarely change. They are, for me, the building blocks of the narrative to come, and absolutely essential.
Reader Comments (2)
Thank you for an insightful post.
The three simple aspirations were my first goal, and still are.
But your post has concentrated my thoughts about specific aims and objectives. In my heart (and head) I know them and can burble about them in a roundabout way. They've always been there while I've been drafting my book. But today I am going to write them down in concrete form.
Fantastic advice! I have never written down these goals, but I'm sure all writers do have goals beyond getting the thing published. The aspiration to explain, to illustrate, or to explore is the real reason we write--not just publication (which will be divine, I'm sure). Thank you for the suggestion of pinpointing these aspirations as I'm writing. I'm sure it will make the writing more sincere.