Bibliopath #18: In which we work very hard to stay still
Dear reader,
Here's a sentence:
Ask any ice-skater or ballet dancer or show jumper, anyone who lives by beautiful moving things: nothing takes as much work as effortlessness.
Maybe not my favourite sentence from Tana French's The Likeness (the second in the series that I've devoured, a beautifully written police procedural with a hook like a barbed wire fence)—and to be fair, there are many beautifully written sentences here—but one that beautifully expressed something I've been thinking about.
One of the most common pieces of advice for writers is to read, and to read widely. It's good advice (you can tell in about six sentences when someone is trying to write without being a reader).
However. Something I've been thinking about is how we come into the literary world as readers. To use the Narnia metaphor, it is the portal through which we get to that world. You cannot arrive there except by reading. There is a difference between being Polly and being Aslan, is what I'm trying to say.
Cassie, the lead character of The Likeness, is an undercover detective—every movement, ever word, every reaction has to be simultaneously considered and spontaneous. Like many things in fiction, it is an apt metaphor for fiction: to write is to put on the clothes of your characters, to say what they would spontaneously say as they would say it. To not be caught out by the truths of your own fiction.
I fear that creators and creatives and myself—especially those pausing at the perceived gap between their own sweat-drenched efforts and the immaculate patina of their favourite creations—cannot hear enough: there is work there, underneath. So keep putting in the work: the effort to make it seem effortless. Only all of art follows from that paradox.
Best,
Guan