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Baroque in Hackney (a blog written by a poet and siren) recently posted in her usual glamorous style about Elizabeth Bowen on writing. Writers on writing. Marianne Moore opened one poem, “Writing is exciting” (she was being momentarily very clear). Every week at Arvon we feed and house and listen to and work with and learn from writers, who write and read and talk and cook and eat and walk in our houses and gardens and landscapes. Every week - writers on writing.
Writing about writing. Here’s Elizabeth Bowen on plot:
“PLOT: (Essential. The Pre-essential.) Plot might seem to be a matter of choice. It is not. The particular plot for the particular novel is something the novelist is driven to. It is what is left after the whittling-away of alternatives. The novelist is confronted, at a moment (or at what appears to be the moment: actually its extension may be indefinite) by the impossibility of saying what is to be said in any other way. He is forced towards his plot. By what? By ‘what is to be said’. What is ‘what is to be said’? A mass of subjective matter that has accumulated - impressions received, feelings about experience, distorted results of ordinary observation, and something else - X. This matter is extra matter. It is superfluous to the non-writing life of the writer. It is luggage left in the hall between two journeys, as opposed to the perpetual furniture of rooms. It is destined to be elsewhere. It cannot move until its destination is known. Plot is the knowing of destination.”
“Plot is diction. Action of language, language of action.”
“Plot is story. It is also ‘a story’ in the nursery sense - lie. The novel lies, in saying that something happened that did not. It must, therefore, contain uncontradictable truth, to warrant the original lie.”
“Plot, story, is itself un-poetic. At best it can only be not anti-poetic. It cannot claim a single poetic licence. It must be reasoned - only from the moment when its non-otherness, its only-possibleness has become apparent. Novelist must always have one foot, sheer circumstantiality, to stand on, whatever the other foot may be doing.”
“Plot must not cease to move forward. The actual speed of movement must be even. Apparent variations in speed are good, necessary, but there must be no actual variations in speed.”
We share Baroque in Hackney’s delight in thinking about writing about writing, or writing about thinking about writing. Here’s some signposts if you’re plotting to plot.
How I Write: The Secret Lives of Writers
Reading Like A Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and Those Who Want to Write Them
Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing
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