"I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing."
- William Faulkner
I love this quote, though I don't necessarily agree with it (and Faulkner himself might not agree with it completely, as there's a wee taste here of a tongue in a cheek). It does make me think, though, about what it is that draws me to particular forms.
I'm no poet. And it's not a matter of failure, but rather a simple lack of desire or need. While I occasionally read poetry I have no real inclination to write it. I've written a few in the past (well in the past), but almost all were for Creative Writing courses. An assignment, a deadline, a task at hand. I enjoy and appreciate the language of poetry, how experience and emotion can be condensed into bare images, given shape through the most minimal of words. But it doesn't call to me. It doesn't stick in my head, doesn't persist past the moment.
Fiction, for me, has always had a certain magnetism. Something irresistable, a steep sort of gravity which I can't escape. I'm compelled. A fascination, a glamour... a bewitchment with the form.
I like short stories. I like their density, their ability to capture and articulate an idea. I like the idea of a reader being left to extrapolate beyond the parameters of the narrative. We see only a little, we're given clues, subtle hints... the world is out there, yet to be explored. It's a taste, a tease... I enjoy reading short stories, and I enjoy writing them. It's satisfying to sit for a day or two, typing, and then look down at something complete, something I can twist and turn in my hands. How does the light catch it this way? Or maybe this way? I can file and cut and polish and then I have something small and sparkly to admire, maybe to share, maybe to gift to a reader or two.
Yet short stories are not the fictional form that engenders my obsession. Oh, yes. Novels. Let me write odes to thee, my love, my novels read and written.
What is it, though, that creates this fierce attraction? More than anything I love to read novels. Poetry and short stories, yes. Non-fiction, yes. Memoir, my new and growing friend, yes. But novels... I think I like the journey of a novel. It's not about an instant, a moment, about something ephemeral and transitory, but rather it's built up slowly around me, a slow articulation, a meditation in words.
It was a novel, of course, that started it all. The Hobbit was the first, with others to follow. A romance, a passion. It's the novel I'm obsessed with, both reading and writing them. Studying them, poking them with sharp sticks to see if I can discern how they work, what makes them tick, how the little hand is connected to the big hand.
Writing a novel, for me, is writing towards something, writing to find something. It's an exploration, a movement from desire to understanding. I like how hard it is, how long it takes. It's a marathon instead of a sprint. You need to measure yourself, you need patience and will. You need to get lost inside your own head to survive a novel. It's probably going to hurt, you might want to stop... but you have to take another step and another step and then one more. You can't see the finish line... but you know it's there. You're racing against yourself. And somewhere on that journey, lost inside your head, you will find something important. You will see your limbs moving and that movement will be a revelation.
So what about you? What draws you to the forms you choose? Why do you write it? Any secret yearnings? Maybe an epic in iambic pentameter? Lay it out there...