Revision-ism

I’ve been taught—I, myself, have taught—that revising is an indispensable part of the writing process. I don’t mean proof-reading to correct typos and other trivial errors—a minor element of revision—but a close examination of the text. Revision is literally “seeing again,” an attempt to look, with new eyes, at what one wrote, from the perspective of a reader, and to use the insights gained to improve it. Revising helps eliminate gaps, remove unnecessary repetition, clarify and enhance expression. It brings us closer to conveying what it is we set out to convey. Writing without revising is a bit like making a loaf of bread and serving it before it’s baked. As much as I value the role of revision in producing the best possible text, it’s playing a larger role in my writing than I suspected or intended. I don’t just revise what I’ve written, but rely on revising to write. Revising has become my mode of writing. Here’s how the process works.

When I’m stirred by an idea (or by guilt at not doing something productive), I sit down and start writing something. It might be a piece of fiction, an essay, or even an e-mail. I write until: a) I’ve finished what it is I want to say (rarely); b) I get exhausted by the effort (sometimes); or c) get interrupted and turn my attention elsewhere (often). Whether I write a paragraph or several pages, it’s certain to be rough because I’m intent on the thing that impelled me to write it down, but I’m not perturbed because I know that I’ll revisit it and clean it up later.

Coming back to pick up where I left off, whether it’s a few hours later or the next day or week, I invariably go to the beginning or at least back several paragraphs to catch the thread of the piece in order to continue seamlessly. As I read, I find errors, which I fix along the way. If I come across a word that isn’t quite right, I linger over it till I come up with a better one. But changing a word is a bit like changing an ingredient in a recipe—it necessitates other changes. I might come across something that needs elaboration. Perhaps I need to smooth out a transition or make a description more vivid. A new idea pops into my head, and when I insert it, other sentences need to be added or re-arranged. My simple review turns into copy editing. I may end up deleting more than I add during the session, and I have only replaced what I previously wrote instead of moving the piece forward.

My third session goes very much like the second. Once again, I need to start from the beginning to refresh my memory. Of course, I find new mistakes occasioned by my previous revision. In the heat of making changes, syntax gets mangled and necessary words are deleted. As I read on, I notice that the previous revision changed the entire focus of the piece. This isn’t a bad thing, because the new focus is better. But it requires reconfiguring what I’ve already written. So it goes with successive sessions, occupying myself with what’s already on the page instead of adding something new. I creep forward in this way toward an elusive destination.

Still, I’m pleased with my revisions, certain they have vastly improved the piece (even if no one but me would notice them). I’m always confident at the end of each session that I’ve made every necessary correction and revision. The next time I sit down to write, I’ll be able to surge forward. But it never seems to work out that way. The next time I take up my masterpiece, I find glaring errors I couldn’t possibly have made. Sometimes I can’t even figure out what it was I was trying to say. I wonder who’s been fiddling with my manuscript while I was gone. This session goes like all the others that preceded it.

E. I. Lonoff, the idolized author in Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer, describes his craft as turning sentences. “I turn sentences around,” he says. “That’s my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences together and turn them both around.” That’s it precisely, although I notice he adds a new sentence after lunch before turning the previous sentence first.

It was encouraging to read about an author, albeit a fictional one, as lost in revision as I am. Sometimes, however, I suspect that’s not the way everyone writes. I doubt if Dickens started out with “It was a good time, no, it was a bad time,” and gradually worked his way up to “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Some authors get stuff right the first time and forge ahead rather than look back. And that’s where my problem is—I don’t get it right the first time. Revision serves as a crutch. It allows me to limp along to my destination. The writing-by-revising approach does provide one benefit—I rarely have to stare at a blank sheet of paper. Instead of having to start from scratch and create something new each time I sit down to write, I return to a partially written piece and rearrange words rather than rely on my unreliable imagination.

Apart from the slow pace, there are other problems related to this mode of writing. For one thing, my incessant editing robs what I’m writing of freshness, making both process and product more ponderous and overwrought. Even worse, the magic of creating something from nothing, maybe the greatest reward of art, is diminished. It’s a wonderful feeling to start with nothing at all, a blank canvas, and fill it with color and life. Characters, conversations and situations that didn’t exist before putting pen to paper come alive. That satisfaction is not totally absent, but my slow, tortoise-like progress is as hard to perceive as the growth of a blade of grass. I don’t feel like I’m creating something so much as editing it into existence. My daily process is a grind, a conscious working at getting things right rather than the free-flowing flights of fancy I long for, with images springing spontaneously from the depths of my soul and flowing through me onto paper. Now that’s writing—not the clerical editing I depend on to fill pages.

In exchange for the satisfaction of seeing something quickly emerge from nothing, slow revision-writing can surprise by producing something radically different from what I started out writing. If it’s a story, the plot and characters may change significantly along with the spirit of the tale. The focus of an essay may mutate or the thesis get turned on its head because, while revising, I persuade myself to the opposite point of view from where I started. Take this essay, for example. It started as a complaint about my habit of excessive revision. Now I find myself lauding its benefits. I begin writing with the idea that I have something to say, and gradually realize that I don’t so much have something to say as much as I have something to think about, and writing is the vehicle for such thought. The process of revision and re-reading again and again what I’ve written allows me to scrutinize and organize my thoughts. A swift-flowing river moves forward without changing course, while a slow one meanders this way and that. A quickly produced text may be more direct and forceful, but one born through fits and starts may include unexpected insights and diversions.

After many a twist and turn, corrections, deletions and additions, I eventually get to the end of what I’m writing and am content to think of it as done and move on to something else. But that doesn’t mean that the battle is over. If I happen to look at the piece again, I will certainly find things to tweak and change, and if I’m not careful, I’ll end up back in the revision trap, transforming what I had considered complete into something altogether different. I’m resigned to the idea that as long as I live and breathe (and re-read what I’ve written), nothing I write will ever truly be finished.