A load on Trollope

I have a nasty cold coming on – possibly flu.  I set myself the task of writing a one thousand-word essay today but I doubt if I will accomplish it.

Earlier in the year, I read Anthony Trollope’s The Warden and Barchester Towers.  In between reading the two novels, I dipped into his autobiography in which he revealed his disciplined writing method.

When deciding upon a second career as a novelist with the purpose of making a living, Trollope devised for himself a strict regime of writing daily, and kept a record of his progress in a diary for the purpose.  Usually he write an average of ten thousand words per week.

He worked for the Post Office, and had to travel around Ireland and England writing reports for his superiors.  At first he travelled by horseback until the advent of the steam age, when naturally he took the train.

It occurred to him that he could turn the time he travelled idly to some account, so he made himself a ‘tablet’ (from which the word tabloid is derived) and used this a form of writing desk.  At first, he felt conscious of his literary pretensions in front of his fellow travellers (apparently farm workers) but soon got over this realising that he could write legibly.

Here in his own words is his account of his method:

.  I had previously to this arranged a system of task-work for myself, which I would strongly recommend to those who feel as I have felt, that labour, when not made absolutely obligatory by the circumstances of the hour, should never be allowed to become spasmodic.  There was no day on which it was my positive duty to write for the publishers, as it was my duty to write reports for the Post Office.  I was free to be idle if I pleased.  But as I had made up my mind to undertake this second profession, I found it to be expedient to bind myself by certain self-imposed laws.  When I have commenced a new book, I have always prepared a diary, divided into weeks, and carried it on for the period which I have allowed myself for the completion of the work.  In this I have entered, day by day, the number of pages I have written, so that if at any time I have slipped into idleness for a day or two, the record of that idleness has been there, staring me in the face, and demanding of me increased labour, so that the deficiency might be supplied.  According to the circumstances of the time,--whether my other business might be then heavy or light, or whether the book which I was writing was or was not wanted with speed,--I have allotted myself so many pages a week.  The average number has been about 40.  It has been placed as low as 20, and has risen to 112.  And as a page is an ambiguous term, my page has been made to contain 250 words; and as words, if not watched, will have a tendency to straggle, I have had every word counted as I went.  In the bargains I have made with publishers I have,--not, of course, with their knowledge, but in my own mind,--undertaken always to supply them with so many words, and I have never put a book out of hand short of the number by a single word.  I may also say that the excess has been very small.  I have prided myself on completing my work exactly within the proposed dimensions.  But I have prided myself especially in completing it within the proposed time,--and I have always done so.  There has ever been the record before me, and a week passed with an insufficient number of pages has been a blister to my eye, and a month so disgraced would have been a sorrow to my heart.

Although I have no plans to churn out intriguing romances for serialisation in the magazines of the day, I found Trollope’s prudent and sagacious words an inspiration.  I am now writing six 500-word essays and one 1000-word essay a week – just for the exercise and much needed practice.

I began on Michaelmas Day, proposing to practice daily until Lady Day next year.  Each month that passes, I intend to increase my output by a thousand or two words.  Actually, I tend to write more than the minimum words per week I allot myself with extracurricular miscellaneous essays.

This project of practice essays I call The Novice Papers or less grandly The Novice, in a nod to that great essayist of the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson, who produced a series of satirical papers called The Adventurer, The Rambler and The Idler.

Come Lady Day, when my apprenticeship will be over, I will possibly embark upon another project of literary endeavours, this time with an eye on publication.  So in the New Year I will have to find the money for magazine subscriptions and find out what this twenty-first century is all about.

I tend to read nineteenth century pulp and eighteenth century poetry, so I have only a rough idea what modern journalists write about – celebrity cellulite, sunbathing royals, reality programmes, dodgy politicians and even dodgier journalists, newspaper editors and proprietors.

Anyway, thanks to Anthony Trollope, it looks like I have managed to find something to write about in one thousand words.  Admittedly four hundred and twenty-three of them were Trollope’s own words, but I have flu and I am desperate not to let myself down despite my ailment.

As I have now less than a hundred words to go, I am gazing at the brandy bottle, and thinking of the honey and hot lemon I will have before I climb into bed.

I am wondering what I might read tomorrow and what I might write.  Whatever it is I write it is only going to be five hundred words, unless I am carried away with the topic and myself.

Good night.