Holes in the Vessel

Does talking about a book before it's finished somehow jinx the work?

There’s an alchemical idea that applies well to writing - that what you need to do is keep the vessel tightly sealed to build heat for the work. Talking about your story before you’ve written it is like letting heat out of the vessel. You lose heat, you lose momentum. This is why many writers wisely keep things quiet until the work is done.

Since I’m not wise, I went on Dr John Vervaeke’s podcast and spoke in depth about the book I’m working on. (Link at the bottom).

This felt risky in two ways. 1. Would doing this piss away the heat I’d gathered for the work? 2. More than a hundred thousand people subscribe to Vervaeke’s channel. To not finish the book after talking about it so publicly would carry a greater failure than if I’d kept it secret.

By telling you this I’m trying to raise the stakes even higher, to make a high-wire act of my life because it’s bold and daring and we only, in this form, live once. What I want to do is write great stories and see them published. If I don’t do that, if the work doesn’t get finished, then in some sense it will have been a wasted life. Yes, friends and family are important. Each day offers quietly numinous moments that can be missed or taken for granted. Still though, you have a calling. Mine’s tied up with words and stories.

The Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami talks about how the main challenge of writing a book is to get the whole thing to meet the writer’s own internal standards, as close to the internal vision as you can get. If the gods of writing smile upon you then you might go beyond that vision, but just getting close to the internal bar can cause a lot of writers so much existential fear that they’ll go to great lengths to avoid the work.

Douglas Adams, author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, had to get his editor to lock him in a hotel room until a draft was finished. This had to be agreed with Douglas’s wife, that she wouldn’t see him for a while, and that Douglas, even if he wanted to, would not be allowed to leave the room. His editor had to be in there with him to thwart his escapes.

Anyone who has tried going freelance should be able to relate to this. Motivating yourself is hard, especially six days a week, every month, every year. Various tricks are needed to maintain focus and interest and heat for work. Secrecy is one of these. That’s the path of the well-sealed vessel. Don’t tell anyone. Suppose you do though. Suppose you tell a friend the whole story all the way to the ending, and you get from your friend the reaction you were hoping the story would conjure. Yes, you know it works, but the story’s been told now. You know it works. You saw it land, so you relax. That’s when vapours escape. The story got what it was looking for. To be told. To be heard. Not allowing that to happen creates useful tension to get the book finished.

This isn’t always the way, and I know some writers who need to speak the story to another human to help them shape it. Different moles for different holes. I do place a lot of value on the idea of keeping the vessel well-sealed though, which is odd after spouting on about my story to Vervaeke. I’ve got a great excuse though. Research.

Who said research had to be confined to reading books? Sometimes I’d rather have a good conversation, especially with someone who’s read more books than me. John Vervaeke’s read them ALL. Joking. But he is steeped in the philosophical traditions I tend to value highest. He’s cognitive scientist, but he’s also Taoist. He deeply values Zen Buddhism, but also our western tradition of Neo-Platonism. He seems committed to waking Boring Culture from its sleep-walk, so I have a lot of respect for what he’s doing. All this made it a little nerve-racking to lay bare some of my story’s ideas to check if they held water. Still, it’s better to know early on if things aren’t working, or which bits need more attention.

Anyway, this was a little post was to break the silence, since I’ve not written here since Dung Beetles. I have more ideas for essays I’d like to share here on Talismans, but a certain baseline number of daily hours is required to write a book, and my rule has been not to work on any other projects until those hours are been met. Work, children, house jobs, illness, writing. It all goes together in one glorious storm. The director Guillermo del Toro is fond of quoting this guy (I can’t remember who it is) but he says ‘Making a film is like sculpting in a sandstorm.’ I think doing a book can be like that too.