Dubious Quality

Donna Tartt, for one. Even though she's won a Pulitzer, I'd never heard of her until recently. Eli 22.5 pointed her out, actually, and once I read five pages of her first book, I was riveted. She's written three books over a period of almost forty years (The Secret History, The Little Friend, and The Goldfinch), and they're all brilliant.

One quality that defines her work is her brilliance at structure. Many writers have only a loose grip on the structure of their work, but she's meticulous. Her novels are long, intricate, and immaculately structured.

She's also an unusual person, and a slow worker (both of which I can personally identify with). 

Reading her work made me think about writing in general, and the process of drafts and how they evolve. Most of the best novels have almost a wave structure (not exactly, but similar), a sequence of peaks and troughs which vary depending on their location (the difference from peak to trough generally grows as you progress through the narrative). 

Like I said, many writers struggle with managing this at a single level, but Tartt always has a big wave (the central question or theme of the work) with smaller waves inside them (something in every chapter to drive the reader forward, even if the central question doesn't progress). It's beautiful.

Reading her work made me think about how I construct narrative. In early drafts, I construct the wave sequence, but many of those waves tend to be the same height. It's not until later drafts that I add amplitude to distinguish them.

That was how I wrote The Man You Trust, anyway. For This Doesn't Feel Like the Future, I'm more aware, and I'm going back and adding amplitude to the first sixty pages, even though I have the rest of the second draft still to write.

If I have the second draft finished by the end of the year, I'll be pleased. I'm still pokey, but marginally faster now. If you're a turtle, though, it's hard for anyone else to tell.