Mountain Climbing and Alligator Wrestling
Writer: Lee Zacharias
There’s a saying among photographers: “Nobody cares how many mountains you climbed or alligators you wrestled to get the picture. All that matters is the picture.” Only novices believe that if they just had this lens and that camera they could produce award-winning shots.
Literary work too has to stand on its own merits, but if the questions writers field at panels and presentations are any indication, readers and beginning writers are endlessly fascinated with process. We all want a magic formula. Write by hand. Blackwing pencil. Rapidograph pen. Moleskin notebook. Sketchpad. Go straight to the computer. Get up at 4 a.m. Straight back chair. Yoga ball. Lie on the floor. Use a standing desk. Outline. Don’t. Write 250 words a day no matter what. Coffee. Lots of coffee. And voila! You too can produce a published book.
Some of these methods work for some writers. But there is no one-size-fits all when it comes to process. Nor should a writer feel guilt about what works or doesn’t work for them. Even for those who adhere to superstitious rituals, there is plenty of mountain climbing and alligator wrestling that doesn’t show in the finished product. Nor does the beautiful handwritten first draft, part of which may be on scraps of envelopes now lost. All of it may have been written at a keyboard. There is nothing inherently more holy about the word that began its life in cursive than the one that started out in 12-point Times-Roman. Some writers practice every day—and that’s a good thing. An ongoing practice is a useful discipline. But there are also many fine writers who require long silences between works, who need to let the reservoir refill before they find more ink. And then there are the writers who don’t require silences but have them imposed—interruptions, other obligations, illnesses, emergencies—yet manage, again and again, to return and complete their projects.
My point is that, though we spend an inordinate amount of time on it, the process doesn’t matter, as long as you make it work for you. I haven’t written by hand since my mother found the beginning of a silly preteen novel in a steno book intended for class notes stuffed beneath my mattress and forbade me to write. At college, safely away from her snooping, I used a typewriter; the move to a computer keyboard was a natural one for me, though I’m old enough to print nearly everything I write and scribble all over it before I return to the computer. I am not an early riser. I don’t drink coffee. I get interrupted—a lot.
When I hear some writers speak of three or even five drafts, I’m astonished. Most of my book have required at least twenty. Thirty is not unheard of. I write toward the answer to a question I haven’t yet framed, which is to say I’m a pantser—one who discovers as she goes along rather than planning out a plot. And though I knew from the get-go that there would be a ghost in my third novel, Across the Great Lake, it wasn’t until the twenty-second draft that I understood who the ghost was or what it wanted, which changed everything, though that everything involved a single word. Despite my lengthy and haphazard process, every one of my books has eventually seen publication, nor have I published any of them myself.
Some books need interruption. When that’s the case, you turn to something else, another writing project, another medium such as painting, music, photography, or something completely unrelated—swimming, gardening, training for a marathon. There’s no expiration date on return.
And when it’s done, when the book, essay, poem, or play finds its audience, you may find yourself taking questions. Because you’re a writer, not a photographer, you can talk about the mountains you scaled and beasts you battled, knowing that it wasn’t really the height of the hills or fierceness of the foes, or even how you fought them, but the fact that you did. In the end it’s not fountain pen vs. keyboard, sketchpad vs. ream of cheap copy bond, Mac vs. PC. It’s not the camera, not the lens, but the material that wouldn’t let you go, and your perseverance. You. You and only you.
About the Writer
Lee Zacharias is the author of 4 novels, a collection of essays, and a collection of short stories. She has twice won the North Carolina Sir Walter Raleigh Award for fiction and silver medals from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. Her third novel, a 2019 Notable Michigan Book, also won the Phillip H. McGath Book Award for Fiction. She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. Her essays have been anthologized and frequently cited in The Best American Essays. What a Wonderful World This Could Be is her most recent novel.
Website: leezacharias.com