Donal: Nevertheless, I suggest, there is nearly
always some 'progress'
from an artist's earliest work and nearly always
progress in their
'knowledge'.
Eric: Yet the "problems" an artist must solve--in
writing a novel, composing a symphony, completing
a painting--are specific to that work.
In a novel, for example, you may have the
inspiration of the novel, a rough plot outline, a
sense of characters, etc. Yet much of this has to
be re-thought and re-worked as you proceed. Plots
generate subplots which need to be reconciled,
characters refuse to behave as you have planned
they do, and the original inspiration behind the
work itself may be enhanced or subverted by giving
it form. And so you discover that writing novel A
presents unique and special challenges (not
necessarily technical challenges) and novel B
presents challenges of an entirely different order.
Especially if you're not trying to crank out
formula work, each work has its own demands. Part
of this is the need to more fully imagine every
scene--that the imagination is restless and will
not merely recap a previous scene's details; part
of this has to do with the protean mysteries of
literary structure, and the way the telling is the
tale; and part of this is that, having solved the
problem of one novel, the writer is no longer
interested in the same problems.
Hence my claim that writing a novel may only give
you knowledge of how to write that particular novel.
------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
