There’s a Neil Young song called F*!#in’ Up, with a chorus that runs, simply:
Why do I keep fuckin’ up?
The simple answer is, of course: because that’s what we do.
I can only think of one film that I would describe as perfect: The Maltese Falcon, a 1941 adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s (imperfect) novel, directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and the immortal Elisha Cook Jr. I wouldn’t describe it as the greatest film ever made. It is, however, ‘spot on’: script, performances, mise en scène… there’s really nothing you could point a finger at and say, ‘that’s wrong’.
If I had to choose my favourite film, it would probably be Terrence Malick’s 1978 Days of Heaven. This affects me more deeply than any other film I have ever seen. But it contains one spectacularly muffed sequence, a night-time prairie fire, where the inadequacy of the film’s budget creates a huge, imperfect blemish in its heart.
It’s a great movie. But they fucked up the fire.
The process of writing — at least as I practise it — is one of continual failure, and of the subsequent failure of all attempts to remedy that initial failure. And so on.
I usually start a book by writing an outline. I can’t honestly say I’ve ever come up with a perfect outline. They’re always full of holes, wrong moves, questions that I can’t answer… In the end, the only way to get it over with is to let the mistakes and failures stand… and hope that I can fix them later.
The first draft throws into relief all the failings of the outline… but is itself a failure.
Rinse and repeat
My second Frank Sampson novel, Pariah, is due out early in 2016. I have just sent the grown-ups a third draft.
It’s been a slog. My editors’ notes stripped bare all the shortcomings of the previous draft. It hurt, but that’s what editors’ notes are supposed to do.
(If they don’t hurt, either you’re Jane Austen, or somebody’s taking the piss.)
I made some significant changes. Half a dozen characters got consigned to the scrapheap. Scenes switched around and got dropped. New scenes appeared.
Fixing failure
And then, just the day before I wanted to send it off, I spotted a major fuck-up: three entire chapters that were dull-boring-dull. So I hacked them out and sewed up the hole.
I assume that this version, like its predecessors, will be a failure. All I can say is that I think I’m just beginning to feel that maybe I’m getting the hang of the story.
So in a few weeks I’ll get a new set of notes and it’s on to the next draft.
“No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
(Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho, 1983)
Donald Hounam 