Sophie may just have found the way out of repetitive perfectionism…

This week I have been thinking a lot about the Critical Minute in a story. The subject has cropped up in three different ways over the last month. So I decided the universe had sent me enough signals about a new path I needed to consider.

As regular readers of this blog may remember, I’m working on the absolutely final edit of a book that’s been in progress for years. It’s very hard to do, because I sort of love it. But I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that, for all the work I’ve put into it, something is still missing.

Still, one must be sensible. I realise that letting go will be tough. And the time is coming to set it free to sink or swim without further tiffling.

Critical Minute – Reminder 1

The first was no more than a tickle. I was clearing out some very old essay notes when a sentence caught my eye.

“There is, sir, a critical minute in every man’s wooing, when his mistress may be won; which if he carelessly neglect to prosecute, he may wait long enough…”

The author was the wonderfully named Shackerly Marmion. He was an early seventeeth century playwright, a follower of Ben Jonson. I didn’t remember him at all. (I had to look him up just now.) In fact, I fell over the quotation as a student, while researching the origins of the idea of a Critical Minute.

My friends and I had argued over the meaning of “critical” in the concept. The classicists insisted that it was a period of time during which you evaluated information you had received. Then you made a rational decision based on it. Leaning heavily towards “criticism”, this interpretation sounded dull to me.

Whereas I had come to the idea through Robert Browning, particularly The Ring and the Book. For him the Critical Minute was clearly tied up with inspiration.

My interpretation of his use was a pivotal moment where everything could fall apart if he chose the wrong path. But the rewards would be stratospheric.

Ferociously exciting in other words. But dodgy to manage. Shackerly seemed to have same idea, bless him.

Critical Minute – a Second Hint

Blackbird

This came when I wasn’t worrying about editing or even thinking about writing at all.

The Birdwatcher and I try to take a few days on the south coast around this time of year for a little binocular action in the wild.

This year the  blackbirds were well up to standard in numbers and liveliness, the Bird Watcher was pleased to see. Though some of our other old friends, most notably the whitethroat, seemed disturbingly thin on the ground.

I wasn’t so fancy myself, either. I’d had a busy few weeks just before we left. My brain was tired and my muscles were seriously under-exercised. Towards the end of our usual extended route on Portland, from cliff to heath to meadow and back, I knew I’d over-estimated my capacities. My knees had really started to hurt.

Maybe I ought to get out while I could still move and head for somewhere to sit down.

Image by Joe from Pixabay

BUT that meant cutting out the disused quarry. In other years, we had occasionally seen a little owl. And me, I’m an owl friend to my heart’s core.

So here was my critical minute.

Risk messing up my knees? I might do them permanent damage. Just on the off chance that we might see a bird that probably hadn’t even nested there this year? Crazy!

But yet… If there was any chance at all…

I plodded, with more than a touch of gritted teeth, skirting nettles and taking a lot of care over the uneven ground.

The quarry is shaped like a deep amphiteatre, with a wall of uneven lumps of rock where the stage would be. There are three or four crevices low down in the wall, just above the valley floor. They’re perfect homes for owls. We’ve seeen them there before.

They were empty. No sign of movement. Not so much as a twig or leaf to indicate occupation. not on any of them.

And then there was a little flurry of small brown wings. A   bird flew in, almost to the top of that uneven wall and landed.

It turned round, watchful. It couldn’t be.
I focused the binoculars.

It was. My little owl.

In the late afternoon sun he faced outwards like a suspicious Russian doll. He was glaring fiercely enough to make any would-be predator think again. I very nearly stopped breathing.

We sttled down to watch and so did he. We all stayed that way for a while. And then, with an almost perceptible shrug, he started to preen a bit. Then he half closed his eyes and dozed.

It was wonderful.

Critical Minute – Third Call

This is the one that really made the hairs on my neck stand on end. And I’m not normally superstitious.

When I wrote my first story, I was a) very young b) up to my limit at the public library and c) wanted to read a story that I’d had in my head for ages. (Ever since Walter Scott went off piste and married off Ivanhoe to dreary Rowena instead of the wonderfully brave Jewess Rebecca, if you must know.) I never trained.

Ever since, I’ve been trying to catch up. How To books. Lectures. Workshops. Listening to my writing friends. Four of the books survive on my shelves. Along with a battered envelope file of handwritten notes.

Well, I spent the first day after birdwatching dealing with stuff and filing. And in the process, scattered some papers, including that dogeared old envelope file. Which promptly fell apart. And out tumbled a little notebook, equally battered.

The first thing I saw when I opened it at random? Note to self: the critical minute needs to be recognised – see  Browning R&B, Mr Sludge the Medium, EBB, etc etc….

… Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

… and Julius Caesar 

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

There are several notes, clearly added at different times. Some pretty cryptic. Many scribbled, one or two to the point of illegibility – well, so far. All may become clearer when I start to apply this stuff to The Book in question. And there in the middle, in beautifully clear script, is the message to self:
YOU know this – think spiral staircase.

And indeed, I do know this. Many years ago I fell down a wide polished slate spiral staircase at work. I broke my wrist and got patched up in Barts. But what I remember is the moment I realised I was going. Committed. Beyond recovery. And how, oddly, it was a kind of relief.

Critical Minute Focus

• MY EDITING CHECK LIST
• Character
• Conflict
• Pace
• Tension
• Continuity
• Clarity
• Duplication?
• Scene arc?
• Dialogue – real aloud, are voices right?
• Psychic distance – appropriate?
• Paragraph length?
• Filler words?
• Spell check

I have kept to it pretty slavishly, too. As you will see, a lot of it is narrow focused and involves a fair amount of searching the text and going backwards and forwards between scenes. AAARGH!

The Critical Minute, however, demands a completely different focus. This is about not just a specific scene or scenes. It’s about the whole book.

So that’s what I need now – kill my inner perfectionist and get my head out of the minutiae. Too often this check list has ended up with me trying to double guess my earlier self. Which, of course, can become an endless process of revision, as my friends will heartily confirm.

Free at last. Free at last. Watch this space.

Sophie