How to become a novelist

JOHN Gardner was a novelist and professor of creative writing at many universities, including Chico State, Bennington College, and SUNY-Binghamton. He is the bestselling author of more than 25 books. His novels “Grendel,” “The Sunlight Dialogues” and “October Light” are regarded as modern classics. He was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1982 at the age of 49.

He also wrote “The Art of Fiction,” which has become a bible of sorts for young people who want to write fiction. It serves as a companion piece to “On Becoming a Novelist.” The book is divided into four parts: “The Writer’s Nature,” “The Writer’s Training and Education,” “Publication and Survival,” and fittingly ends with “Faith.” In his preface, Gardner simply writes: “This is not essentially a book on craft, though here and there I give what some may find valuable pointers… The object of the present book is more grand and more humble: I try to deal with, and if possible get rid of, the beginning novelist’s worries.”

John Gardner’s book will help those who want to write their first novel, as well as those who have written one. Photo by W.W. Norton Inc.

And he does so with his accessible prose and helpful comments. He lists down the writer’s qualities. One of them is verbal sensitivity, which is not sheer linguistic legerdemain. The novelist, he said, “worries about telling his story in a moving way, making the reader laugh or cry or endure suspense, whatever it is that this particular story, told at its best, will incline the reader to do.” This can be developed through practice, he said, or why not, even typing out a masterpiece such as James Joyce’s “The Dead” to see how it works.

Second on the list of indicators of a young writer’s talent is the “relative accuracy and originality of his eye. The good writer sees things sharply, vividly, accurately and selectively…” I think Gardner is talking here about the telling details that move the narrative forward, deepen characterization or throw a light on motivation.

He counsels the beginning novelist to please avoid watching television shows. Many young writers seem unable to tell important stories except through the filters and molds of TV. He said: “What chiefly astonishes us in the work of the highest class of novelists — Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Mann, Faulkner — is the writers’ gift for rendering the precise observations and feelings of a wide variety of characters, even entering the minds (in Tolstoy’s case) of animals. The beginning novelist who has the gift for inhabiting other lives has perhaps the best chance for success.”

Intelligence is the third indicator of the novelist’s talent. The intelligence of the novelist is partly natural, partly trained. What comprises this intelligence?

The novelist also needs to have the endurance of a marathon runner. A good poem takes a few days to write, a story maybe a week, but a novel can take months — or even years.

The last indicator of a writer’s talent is an almost daemonic compulsiveness. “No novelist is hurt by a natural inclination to go to extremes, driving himself too hard, dissatisfied with himself and the world around him and driven to improve on both if he can.”

The novelist, notes Gardner, should also write as if he were a movie camera. “Get exactly what is there. All human beings see with astonishing accuracy… Getting down what the writer really cares about — setting down what the writer notices, as opposed to what any fool might notice — is all that is meant by the originality of a writer’s eye.”

In “The Writer’s Training and Education,” Gardner said that those who want to take up the BFA or MFA in Creative Writing should choose the writing program on the basis of its teachers, choosing those whose interests seem most aligned with one’s own.

“Publication and Survival,” the first part, is filled with hard-nosed tips on the writer’s life. Gardner talks about his editors, writers’ conferences and literary agents. The writer, he said, cannot live on his books and has to find a job.

The most congenial seems to be college teaching. College teachers get the summer off and have a short winter break, to boot, during which writing can be done. The college creative writing teacher is usually in school at least three times a week to teach and meet his students.

The book ends with the subject of “Faith.” The writer can get faith partly from community support — his professor, classmates and peers. But what to do when the writing falters and the days darken into depression?

Gardner suggests a time-tested technique: read the fiction of some favorite writer. “The older writer’s dream world and dance of language come bursting into the mind, and one’s capacity for dreaming and playing with words comes unstuck…”

As for novelists who remain troubled about where or how to start their novels, he suggests that they return first to writing stories. The genre is small enough and the story is easier to shape than that of a novel, with its multitude of worlds.

But when the writer is ready to start a novel, Gardner recommends a plan — a careful plot outline, some notes on characters and settings, important events where the story turns, and implications of meaning. He also gives us anecdotes about the writing and publication of his novels and the sheer struggle of it all.

Gardner’s “The Art of Fiction” was a book I read and reread in graduate school at the Department of English of Ateneo de Manila University. It helped me write and revise many of the stories that went into my book, “The Heart of Summer: Stories and Tales.” I think “On Becoming a Novelist” will be my boon companion as well. I also recommend it to the student for its prompts, insights into techniques, and the gentle and generous voice of the teacher, cheering on his students as they write.