DOG: A Masochist’s Tale
Playwright Anita Sullivan describes the making and remaking of a novel that’s taken almost as long to write as Lanark and shares Alasdair Gray’s editorial advice.
No going back
I have been writing my novel Dog for 22 years. I’ve finished it five times. Five times I’ve returned to it to make it better. I can’t calculate the accumulated hours I’ve spent on it, hours I haven’t spent on new projects. So I’m now announcing publicly that I’ve finished it, a promise to myself there’ll be no going back.
Origins: Edinburgh Fringes and 1982 Janine
My journey with Dog started 32 years ago. As a student at Edinburgh I spent more time being a theatre stage-manager and running Fringe venues than studying. I rigged lights, built sets, slept on floors on tour. I earned money working as a life model at Edinburgh School of Art, standing naked in my bare feet. My first play Just Whores was written with sex-workers in Edinburgh’s saunas, in collaboration with the Scottish Prostitutes’ Education project. So when I was given 1982 Janine I felt deep admiration and a strong personal connection.
First draft: 100,000 words to recovery
In 2001 I was dangerously ill. My body recovered, my mind was scattered. I used writing to rewire it. A love story emerged about a woman living in her master’s basement, asking for masochistic atonement for a crime she may or may not have committed. A woman repairing herself. It became a novel. I got to the end of the story, got well and went back to work.
My work is designing online branching scenarios and games for training. I met Kat on a corporate project and we became good friends. Only months later, when I saw the original Alasdair Gray print in her kitchen, did I realise she was his niece. She suggested I send Dog to Alasdair.
Feedback: The Alasdair Gray editing masterclass
I was terrified. His opinion meant so much. If he hadn’t seen anything in it, that would have been the end of it. But he did. We began a correspondence. He gave me the most valuable writing advice I’ve ever received, and I’m sharing it here.
Alasdair’s letter April 2002, page 1 Read transcript
Alasdair’s letter April 2002, page 2 Read transcript
I rewrote the novel but didn’t dare approach a publisher. Kat showed it to a radio producer who wasn’t interested in Dog but liked my writing enough to want to work with me. I’ve since written 50 audio dramas. Dog had served her purpose. But she wouldn’t let me lie.
Revisions: The many tails of Dog
As I wrote more stories, I learned and reflected. I changed the novel’s structure and balance, added layers. Rewriting over so many years put me in conversation with my own work and several younger selves. But does the present me know better than all those past me-s? Have I lost as much as I’ve gained? Maybe I’m just different. Each time I reread Janine, I feel a little less Janine and more Jock. I’m older than him now, and older than both my own protagonists. More Master than Dog.
From Chapter 1:
‘I don’t remember arriving here. My mind had separated from my body in the snow, and didn’t want to be put back together. I had been sedated; I wanted to stay that way.
Days, weeks, memory; all measure, lost. I wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t wash, I broke things, I was barely housetrained and I shrank from your touch. But you tended me. Waited.
Until I accepted the safety of my cell and ate from your hand. Accepted the collar and chain.’
Of course, I edited that paragraph after I pasted it into this blog, I just can’t help myself. In doing so I realise that writing Dog is not about the end, but the process of learning and I will never stop learning; about storytelling, prose, myself and now… about my audience.
Readers: Dog breaks free and goes open-source
A tatty printout of Dog is currently being passed around East London, going from hand to hand. “I think my friend would love this” someone says, and off it goes. Now people I don’t know are sending me emails saying they enjoyed it. It has at least one photocopied twin in Brighton (probably a different version). It’s left my control, become open source. It’s free in both senses and that’s a relief. Me and Dog have reached the end of our sentence.
Last week I got an email from a woman who lived in Moscow in the mid-nineties. She felt the Russian chapters in Dog didn’t show the embattled socialist ethos of ordinary people. It’s interesting, inspiring feedback that would help the story. I just need to work that through, then Dog will be done. Really.
False endings and postscripts
I leave the last word on deferred completion to Alasdair Gray. Who started Lanark when he was 18 expecting to finish it by the end of his summer holidays. And who actually saw it published a few years before his 50th birthday. And who wrote a letter to me, added a post-script, and finally posted it six years later! Maybe there’s hope for Dog yet.
P.S. Does a long process with multiple revisions make a piece of work stronger, or destroy its original truth?
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Anita Sullivan is an award-winning writer of radio and theatre plays, short-stories, podcasts and video screenplays. All her 60+ scripts have been staged or broadcast. She’s also a digital storyteller, creating interactive narratives for VR and gamified worlds.