In Steven Soderbergh’s film Kafka, Jeremy Irons, in the lead role, sneaks into a creepy castle （based, of course, on The Castle） through a cabinet filled with rows of drawers. When I saw that scene, it struck me that it looked like a spatial representation of my own brain. It’s a really interesting film, so check out that scene if you get the chance. My brain isn’t quite that creepy, but the structure may be similar.
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Although I compose essays as well as works of fiction, unless circumstances dictate otherwise I avoid working on anything else when I am writing a novel. That’s because if I am turning out a series of essays and I dip into one of my memory drawers, I may extract material that I need later. That may mean I open a drawer to get something for my novel only to discover that it has already appeared somewhere else. If I want to include the story of someone who starts sneezing whenever they get angry, for example, but have already published it in a weekly journal, it can be a real disappointment. Of course, there is no rule that says that the same material can’t be used in an essay and a story, but I have found that doubling up like that somehow weakens my fiction. My advice, then, is to hang a sign on your chest of drawers that says For Fiction Only when you are in the process of writing. You never know what you are going to need later, so it pays to be miserly. This is one piece of wisdom I have picked up in the course of my long career.
When you emerge from the novel-writing process, you can dip into the unopened drawers, take the unused material （what might be called “surplus goods”） stored there, and use it in your essays. In my case, though, essays are no more than a sideline, like the cans of oolong tea marketed by beer companies. If something is really tasty, I save it for my main job—my next novel. Once a critical mass of such material has accumulated, my desire to launch a new book naturally kicks in. This is why I guard my chest of drawers so carefully.
Remember the scene in Steven Spielberg’s film E.T. where E.T. assembles a transmitting device from the junk he pulls out of the garage? There’s an umbrella, a floor lamp, pots and pans, a record player—it’s been a long time since I saw the movie, so I can’t recall everything, but he manages to throw all those household items together in such a way that the contraption works well enough to communicate with his home planet thousands of light years away. I got a big kick out of that scene when I saw it in the movie theater, but it strikes me now that putting together a good novel is much the same thing. The key component is not the quality of the materials—what’s needed is magic. If that magic is present, the most basic daily matters and the plainest language can be turned into a device of surprising sophistication.
First and foremost, though, is what’s packed away in your garage. Magic can’t work if your garage is empty. You’ve got to stash away a lot of junk to use if and when E.T. comes calling!
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The first time I sat down to write a novel, nothing came to mind—I was completely stumped. I hadn’t been through a war like my parents, or endured the postwar chaos and hunger of the generation directly above me. I had no experience of revolution （I had experienced a kind of ersatz revolution but didn’t want to write about that）， nor had I undergone any form of brutal abuse or discrimination that I could remember. Instead I had grown up in a typical middle-class home in a peaceful suburban community, where I suffered no particular want, and although my life had been far from perfect, neither was it steeped in misfortune （in relative terms I was fortunate）。 In other words, I had spent a mundane and nondescript youth. My grades weren’t the greatest, but they weren’t the worst, either. There was nothing, in short, that I felt absolutely compelled to write about. I possessed some measure of desire to express myself, but had no intrinsic topic at hand. As a result, until I turned twenty-nine I never considered writing a novel of my own. I lacked material, I thought, as well as the talent to create something without it. I was someone who could only read novels. And read them I did, piles and piles of them, never supposing for a moment that I could write one.
I believe that the younger generation today faces quite similar circumstances. In fact, they may have even fewer issues that beg to be written about than we did. What, then, to do under such circumstances?
The way I see it, the “E.T. method” is their sole option. Their only recourse is to throw open their garage doors, drag out whatever they have stored away to that point—even if it looks like no more than a pile of useless junk—and slave away until the magic takes hold. No other approach can help us contact distant planets. We can only try our best with what we have at hand. If you do give it your best shot, though, success can be yours. You can realize the glorious feeling of practicing magic. For writing a novel is in the end forging a link with people on other planets. For real!