For the most part, when writers sound like they’re being binary and dogmatic, they’re doing anything but. (There are, of course, exceptions.)
There’s a lovely salty spicy quote from the late Edna O’Brien in The Paris Review (Issue 92, Summer 1984 — paid subscription needed to read the full piece) which I imagine I am to take less as strict gospel and more as a reminder that when writers are asked to talk about writing, they should make the most of the opportunity to say something that provokes other people who write into thinking more actively, more intentionally, about their own approach to writing.
So, here she is:
Well, fuck the plot! That is for precocious schoolboys. What matters is the imaginative truth.
I’ve never read any Edna O’Brien, but I’d be willing to bet that plot DID matter to her a great deal. Her last novel, Girl (2019), was about a young Nigerian woman abducted by Boko Haram — full of imaginative truth, I don’t doubt, but equally I would doubt that plot was disregarded along her journey of exploring that truth.
Could this be a subtle (or not-so-subtle) variation on the age-old planning vs pantsing dilemma in terms of how we might approach our work? Is it a suggestion that O’Brien was less keen on ironing everything out in advance and was keener on finding her novels primarily through the act of writing them? Maybe.
I’m a proud and unapologetic planner. I like having a detailed synopsis to work with as a roadmap for the novel that is about to emerge after it. Like using any map, it’s my prerogative to stick to the route that’s laid out before me, or to choose to take a detour as and when I feel like it.
I enjoy having a destination to keep travelling towards, but as a serial digresser, I revel in the chances to take some scenic off-road meanders along the way — some of them big enough and long enough to justify the literary equivalent of an unscheduled overnight stay in a remote motorway Travelodge.
So I’m going to be cheerful about disregarding O’Brien’s instruction to fuck the plot. I love plot and always will. If that makes me a precocious schoolboy, I’m comfortable with that — give me my lunchbox and my PE kit and send me on my way.
But I’m going to reframe her third sentence, replacing one of her words with another of my own to express something that feels very important to me:
What matters is the your imaginative truth.
However we get there, map in hand or just putting one foot in front of the other, a place of imaginative truth that each of us can wholeheartedly say feels truthful to ourselves is the endpoint I think we should all be aiming for.
And of course, there’s no guarantee anybody else will think it’s particularly truthful. (Or even particularly imaginative, for that matter.)
But you’re not accountable to them. Only to yourself. So, really, you might just as well uphold your own truth in the first place — in writing, and in all other things.
Having wondered at the beginning if perhaps Edna O’Brien might not have meant what she said to be taken as strict gospel, I’ve found another quotation from her that I’d be very happy to follow entirely to the letter.
Sean O’Hagan interviewed O’Brien for The Observer in 2019, a piece which someone (presumably a very perceptive sub-editor) entitled: “I want to go out as someone who spoke the truth”, and in it, she says this about her work and her career:
“You ask yourself, ‘What am I doing? Why am I doing this?’”
Has she found a satisfactory answer?
“It’s what I chose to do,” she replied without hesitation, “but, more than that, it’s my life. Writing is my breathing.”
The words in bold at the end are my emphasis.
If anyone needs me today, I’ll be over here, still breathing, with my pen in my hand — and feeling very happy with the choices I’m making.
If you have some time today, maybe you’d like to do a bit of breathing, too. I have every confidence you’ll be happy with making that choice, too.