I recently read Roy Hoopes' biography of James Cain and Cain
was a very driven rewriter. He knew where he wanted a piece
to go and what it had to do, and he'd write it. Then he'd
write it again, as though the original draft didn't exist,
and again and again if necessary. He literally rewrote each
chapter, didn't just revise them. That's why it took him so
long to complete many of his books, but also why his dialogue
and prose are so tight and well-crafted. He wrote 1,200 words
a day, every day, even when his work wasn't selling. He
thought nothing of rewriting an entire novel if he felt the
idea was good, but the work didn't do it justice. It would be
a lot easier, in the computer world, to work like this today.
The main thing is to see the work the way a painter sees a
painting, or a composer sees a song or symphony, as a work
on-going and a reason in and of itself. Cain said his best
selling books were plot driven, not character driven: The
Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Serenade.
The character driven stories like Mildred Pierce did not sell
so well as books, although the movie did his reputation a lot
of good. So he looked for good, complex plots and tried to
people them with strong characters, but the story, he
believed, needed to be there for readers and critics to warm
to the book. I think that's an interesting distinction.
Patrick King
--- Mark Coggins <
coggins@immortalgame.com> wrote:
> Seth,
>
> Thanks for the kind words about the
article.
>
> >I wonder if you think Chandler would scrap so
much
> of what he'd gotten
> >down in the first draft (everything he
didn't
> underline) partly
> >because of the typewriter and that changes
meant
> re-typing up the
> >whole page ...
>
> >But at the same time, I think this method
probably
> was a great tool to
> >use and it clearly helped him to produce some
of
> the tightest, best
> >prose I can think of. Do you think he'd have
done
> anything close to
> >this method today? How do you view revision?
I
> think with today's
> >technology most of us probably rewrite far
less
> than writers in
> >Chandler's day.
>
> Those are some good questions and I'm not sure
I
> really know the answers. My
> sense, and it's only that, is that regardless
of
> technology, writers select
> their rewriting approaches based on what seems
to
> work for them, rather than
> what the technology of the time best
enables.
>
> I think there was just something in
Chandler's
> personality that meant
> writing--including revisions--involved
significant
> (re)invention, not just
> "tinkering." Besides the evidence from drafts of
THE
> LONG GOODBYE, I know
> that when he "cannibalized" his short stories
from
> BLACK MASK for his
> novels, he rewrote them significantly.
>
> Contrast that with somebody like Kerouac who
wrote
> ON THE ROAD in the early
> 50s (about the same time as THE LONG GOODBYE)
and
> typed the whole thing on a
> scroll of paper in a single sitting (although
I
> believe he actually drew
> from scenes and notes recorded earlier in
> notebooks).
>
> But, like I said, what do I know?
>
> --MC
>
>
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