In a masterful article on Notre Dame Cathedral, Ken Follett
shares an account from Victor Hugo’s wife about how that French poet began work
on an epic novel about the cathedral in 1830. “He bought himself a bottle of
ink and a huge gray knitted shawl, which covered him from head to foot,” Mme.
Hugo recalled. Then he “locked away his formal clothes, so that he would not be
tempted to go out, and entered his novel as if it were a prison.”
Hugo finished his 180,000-word masterwork four and a half
months later. Publishers of the English edition gave it the title we know
today: The Huchback of Notre Dame.
I’m struck by her statement that Hugo “entered his novel as
if it were a prison.” I believe she saw something more than an obsessive work
habit, though he certainly had that. (Let’s see, if he wrote 180,000 words in
20 weeks, that was 9,000 per week or about 1,400 per day. Every day. Seven days
a week. Without a computer or even a typewriter. We might call that the “hard
labor” typical of prison.)
But I sense something more in her comment. By cutting
himself off from social engagements, Hugo immersed himself in the book he was
writing. He took up residence in its world and would not leave until its story
was fully told. Such single-minded devotion produces great literature. It
also produces the best Christian fiction, regardless of its genre or length.
How about it? Have you entered your novel as if it were a
prison?
