Revision: “making a subsequent draft better than a previous one.” But what does “better” mean when I’m trying to ground myself in “writing as a way of being” or “writing for writing’s sake” and not writing with an end-goal, a linear, teleological purpose? How do I adopt a purposeless purposefulness?
The more I have written as a habit and practice, the more I approach my craft with an attitude of inquiry and inquisitiveness. “What does this concept mean in this new context?” “How can I apply this theory to my life?” “What do all the images in this poem mean together?” “How does this seemingly disparate thing relate to this other thing?” “How do I feel today?” “Who am I today?” Questions. Probing my mind, probing the material world. Probing the intersection between the two.
My purpose in these inquiries is not to “finish” something, per se, but to explore. To understand. To deepen my awareness of self and world. Or maybe just to work through an issue I’m having in a relationship. From the mundane to the cosmic. Writing about something takes it outside of myself and puts it in different frame, so that I can perceive it as simultaneously subjective and objective. I change its context. And often, if I write about it metaphorically, I literally transform the thing into something else—magic.
This is not to say I’m not entirely without purpose: I also seek publication. Many of the pieces I’ve written and—revised—into poems, I do so with the intent of submitting them to literary journals for publication and then placing them in a book manuscript. So, I do have a purpose for many, an end goal: to be enjoyed by someone else, to be understood and have an affect on someone. My poem has changed me, so maybe it will offer a glimpse of change for someone else. But if I remain at the level of “revising to make a better poem” I fail to step into the real substance of the ideas I’m engaging with. Thus, I think a way to avoid the statement “revision is to make something better” is by saying “revision is to engage with the ideas more deeply.”
Peter Ho Davies says in his book The Art of Revision, “I suspect a guiding principle of early drafts might be better phrased ‘Write to know,’ and of revision, ‘Revise to know more,’ and of a final draft, ‘I’ve written what I now know’” (p. 36).
How he describes the act of writing itself, whether first, second, or fiftieth draft, is about the idea: the narrative or emotion in the poem, the character in the story, the history that connects facts. Whatever it’s about. Of course I’m concerned with craft, for careful attention to craft helps me better articulate the idea to my reader; it helps me better articulate the idea to myself. The craft of powerful verbs, clear nouns, or using a variety of sentences to create a rhythm that matches my content all contribute to articulate my ideas with more depth.
A student of mine recently wrote in a reflection on writing about how she thought she was reaching to make some points in her essay, like these ideas were not quite yet fleshed out the way she wanted. I pointed out to her she had taken up a rather complex topic and she’d really only written a first draft. It only made sense that she would feel like her points were reaching since she hadn’t had enough time to think through them more deeply (a half a semester is quite short to develop thoughtful writing).
These first thoughts, first words, first drafts, come from the unconscious but also come from habits of thinking. We need to trust them, but also learn to differentiate between the words from the deep and the habits of every-day use of language. The more we revise, the more we fine-tune our habits of craftful language and the more we embody our unconscious articulately into powerful pieces of writing in earlier drafts.
What I’ve written here is an early draft of this specific piece of writing. But in a way, it’s a 15th draft (or so). I took two classes on revision in my MFA and have all that experience residing in the foundation of my writing experience. Last week I read Janet Burroway’s chapter on revision in Imaginative Writing. Yesterday I watched a TedTalk on revision that was creative in terms of storytelling but disappointing in terms of pushing for writing to get to the end result. I re-read Davies’ chapter and took a bunch of notes. I journaled this morning about revision. I graded 36 reflections and thought a lot about what it actually takes to make a good presentation. All of this while thinking in the back of my mind how to put together a lesson on revision for a class of creative writers.
Each of these iterations is a kind of depth that creates layers of my understanding of revision. They also point to how writing perceived as linear is a fallacy: pre-write, write, revise, edit: done. I’ve moved through stages of writing, pre-writing, revising, writing, pre-writing, editing, to come here, now, to try to articulate some theory of revision that makes sense to me. I’m writing to know what revision means; I’ve revised myself and my context has changed. I’ve revised to know what writing means. But I won’t really be done, for tomorrow I will present my ideas on revision to my class, and likely have some new revelation because I’m not going to memorize my lesson, but instead be open to what comes forth, and trust in the first words that come, the first words that have, in some ways already been revised, and others which are new and fresh. And the week after? Who knows—
I think revision is also, then, about being open to change. Revision is literally “again see/sight” “backward see/sight” The more we open ourselves to change, the more we can enter into the layers of the deep, the images and symbols from the unconscious, and allow it to affect change on us. Revision is about staying flexible to new ways of perceiving through all the senses. Maybe I wrote a poem first with just one sense in mind and I revise with a second sense. How my sense of smell changes all the things I’ve seen! New and deeper meaning emerges from the second sense.
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