Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

Lately in my social media feed various groups have been promoting the value of copy work, the practice of writing by hand the work of authors that writers admire. The strategy helps us see more deeply into the nuts and bolts of good writing.

I tried this with a favorite book, The Night Manager, by John LeCarre.

I opened a page at random and picked a random paragraph. At first glance, this isn’t a particularly important paragraph. Conspirators are waiting for their first meeting with a double agent. The meeting occurs in an abandoned shed in a third-world country. Here it is:

Flynn was standing in the tin shed, beckoning Burr and Strelski to come in. The shed stank of bat, and the heat sprang at them like heat out of an oven. There were bat droppings on the broken-down table and on the wood bench and on the collapsed plastic chairs around the table. Bats hugged each other like scared clowns in two and threes, upside down on the iron girders. A smashed radio stood on one wall, beside a generator with a row of old bullet holes in it. Someone rubbished the place, Burr decided. Someone said, If we’re not going to use the place anymore, no one is, and smashed everything that would smash. Flynn took a last look round outside, then closed the shed door. Burr wondered whether closing the door was a signal. Flynn had brought green mosquito coils. The printed writing on the paper bag said, Save the globe. Go without a bag today. Flynn lit the coils. Spirals of green smoke began climbing into the tin roof, making the bats fidget. Spanish graffiti on the walls promised the destruction of the Yanqui.

Here’s what writing it out long-hand told me: Everything matters to this master spy novelist. Everything is worth taking time over. In this paragraph, he wants me to feel the slow-down of the pace. I’m waiting, like the characters are waiting for the arrival of the pivotal character who will allow the good guys an interior view of the ways the hugely evil bad guys operate.

Lesser writers do this by having characters standing around smoking cigarettes, gazing out through curtains of rain, sitting with an unread magazine by a dirty cafe window, etc. All fiction writers heighten suspense by slowing the pace toward meaningful action.

But LeCarre is next level. Bats? Smashed radio? Shot-up generator? Mosquito coils? Grocery bag? I feel the heat and smell the stench and see the degradation in that tin shed.

Copying this helped me realize that nothing is throw-away to LeCarre. Everything matters. It’s the be-here-now of writing. Which, I think, is the point of copy work, being with the writer word by word.