Revision

I wrote this post a year ago, when I was embarking on what I thought was a final grand revision of a novel I’ve been working on (or poking my way through) for an interminably long time. I made progress, good progress, but I’m afraid I’m just now putting the finishing touches on this whale. My commitment to it is deepening fortunately, even as my anticipation of my next project grows.Here are my thoughts on revision…

I’m going on the record with a controversial statement: Your inner editor, despite his or her persnickety reputation, can be fun.

Now I know that we in NaNoLand advise writers to banish their inner editors during NaNoWriMo. No one wants to hear some crank screaming “No!” in the background or get dressed down for a plot hole during the rush of writing a first draft. But with a first draft in hand, you’ve now built a playground for your inner editor to frolic in. Yes, frolic.

I recently opened the door to the dark mental dungeon where my inner editor has been locked up, and it turns out he’s got a nice smile (despite being a little pale). Examining the arc of my novel is like going down a twisting, double-dipper slide for him, and he loves brainstorming stirring details to add to my story’s cauldron. He also possesses a rather refined eye for sentences written in the passive voice, and he likes prodding me to write with “vivid verbs” and to “show don’t tell.”

So I’m primed to rewrite my swirling, chaotic mess of a NaNo novel and see if I can shape it into something readable, if not outright good. “Writing is rewriting,” as the old adage goes, and although revision has a reputation for being daunting and full of drudgery, it also holds the deep satisfaction of shaping the textures and contours of one’s ideas. It’s just a different kind of play than writing a first draft.

Revising with a Plan
That said, I’ve suffered through flawed approaches to past novel revisions. I tend to just start rewriting from the beginning: reading and reworking the first chapters ad nauseum, so much so that I end up essentially neglecting the final two-thirds of the novel. Because I haven’t devised a true game plan, I don’t make the daring and often necessary moves of restructuring the plot or “killing my darlings,” as William Faulkner advised (one of the best revision tips out there).

I end up with essentially the same novel, only with a new coat of paint on the front porch, continuing to fail to see that there’s a huge hole in the roof.

To escape my revision rut this time around, I’m taking some tips from The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself, by Susan Bell. Bell, a former Random House fiction editor, believes that writers can overcome the “panicky flailing” that revision can induce by learning “to calibrate editing’s singular blend of mechanics and magic.” She weaves in self-editing advice from the likes of Michael Ondaatje, Tracy Kidder, and Anne Patchett, and provides a wonderful running case study of the editorial collaboration between F. Scott Fitzgerald and his editor Max Perkins.

The book opens with a quote by Walter Murch that sums up her approach: “We’re grafting these branches onto a tree that already had an organic, balanced structure. Knowing that we’re changing the organism, we’re trying not to do anything toxic to it, and to keep everything in some kind of balance. At this point, I don’t know what the result will be. I have some intuitions, but my mind is completely open.”

While keeping my mind open—perhaps the key way to make revision fun and creative—here’s an outline of my approach:

Set a deadline: Revision can be another word for procrastination. I have a novel I wrote 9 years ago that I’ve puttered through several times, and it still lacks a decent ending. Just as a deadline is important in churning out a first draft, it’s crucial for the second draft. I’m giving myself 6 months to revise this year’s NaNo-novel. Check in with me on July 1, 2013 and hold me to my words.

Gain distance: “The greater the distance,” writes W.G. Sebald in The Rings of Saturn, “the clearer the view: one sees the tiniest details with the utmost clarity.” Time is the best way to distance yourself from your novel and read it as another might. The key is to take enough time away from your first draft so that you can read it with fresh eyes, but not to take too much time so that you lose your momentum. Everyone is different, but December distanced me plenty from my novel.

Beyond the distance of time, I’ve printed out my novel in a different font so that it won’t look like the novel on my computer screen when I read it. I also plan to read it somewhere else than at home because reading in a café or library will provide an extra layer of remove.

Read first with a macro edit: Bell discusses two types of editing: 1) the macro view, editing with a larger view toward the rhythms and connections of structures and themes; and 2) the micro view, editing with attention to such things as images, word choice, and sentence structure.

In my first pass, I’m not going to noodle with sentences. I want to focus on the big picture and evaluate the patterns of my novel, its leitmotifs and plot points. Then I’ll read the novel again—much more slowly—and hone in on the specifics.

Change my writing mode: Since I banged out my NaNo novel on a keyboard with such desperate speed, I want to slow down for the second draft and ruminate on my story, so I plan to write new sections longhand. Writing with a pen and paper changes writing in mysterious ways because it brings on more pauses and leads to fewer of the Facebook distractions that plague me on my computer.

Revise non-chronologically: Who says you have to revise from beginning to end? I specialize in novels with strong beginnings, weak middles, and weaker endings. Maybe I’ll start with the ending this time around and hop around to sections that need the most strengthening.

Find beta readers: I don’t want anyone to read my first draft; it’s just too messy for another to critique. But after a solid second draft, I’ll crave feedback. Finding readers is tough, though. I’ve made a list of friends who read in the genre I’m writing in, and they know how to deliver feedback without raining on my parade (I hope). My wife is a great reader, but I find that novel critiques and a happy household don’t usually go hand-in-hand.

Fortify myself with resilience magic: Revision can be a battlefield of self-doubt and torture, where writing turns into a swamp of masochism rather than a font of creativity. I’ve done enough revision to know that I’ll have a day or a week or a month when I lose faith in my work, if not my entire worth as a human being.

I’m steeling myself for such moments. As much as I believe in the urgent necessity of letting loose the pure flow of creativity, I also believe in the powers of resilience, the necessity to just keep plodding. Most things are accomplished not in grand gushing sweeps, but through daily incremental resolve.

It’s that resolve that matters most in revision, and I don’t think any “how to” book can give you that. But if you participated in NaNo, you have it. You had the fortitude to accomplish the audacious task of writing a novel in just a month. Revision might even be easier because you already have a story to work with, and hopefully a constructive inner editor to play with.

If you’re ready to revise one of your NaNo novels, please tell me your next steps. I’m constantly refining my approach, so I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I’ve often heard it said that writing is revising, and that’s true in the sense that you’re adding layers and nuances and telling details in revision that often aren’t possible in the bustle or turmoil or excitement of a first draft. You’re making a fine wine in revision, in other words, which takes time, finesse, and sagacity.

Because of this, revision is an art that requires constant scrutiny. You can’t just muscle through a revision like you might a first draft. It needs to be a process of challenge, counterpoint, and exploration—all within the malleable structure you’ve put forth—yet I’ve found that revision can be the opposite of this. It can tend to become lazy, an exercise in reading more than an exercise in active change.

Here’s what often happens to me when I revise a piece (and I’ve heard similar tales from other writers). Author writes first draft of story. Author sits down to write second draft of story. Author reads story start to finish making editorial scritch-scratches in the margins. Author types in changes. Rinse. Repeat. Reload.

Hmmm…it’s a little bit like dancing a waltz, following the same steps over and over again, feeling the nice rhythms of the music, but unable to add the sorts of flourishes, startling details, absurd moments, etc., that make a story special.

There are a good 2,042 tips about how to revise a piece so that you’re not just pushing a plow through an already plowed row, but I’ve come to like no. 2,043.

Here it is: Instead of reading your story start to finish, don’t read it. Don’t even have the story in the room with you. Don’t have your laptop either. Your dog or cat can stay along with your preferred beverage, but that’s it.

The thing is to revise as if you’re still creating, not just refining (as important as refining is). My best moments of creativity happen when I’m not writing within a structure, but meandering—caught in a drift with only the faintest sense of purpose.

So here’s one way of doing that: I grab a few books of poetry, an art book or two, my describer’s dictionary, and I page through them randomly, with some Mingus or Sonic Youth or Calexico or Arvo Part on in the background, and think about my story through all of these influences. I drop in and out of poems, riff on a phrase or a word or whatever comes to mind.

I’m not really thinking of my story, yet I am. I’m tracing moods, dreaming, conjuring, whatever. I write little scenes, character descriptions, single words that I like. It’s all a collage, which for me is the word that defines the best sort of creativity. It’s playful. One thing layers upon another. It’s impossible to make a mistake.

And that’s the crux of a second or third draft—the tendency to want to preserve instead of explore. The curves of a creation are in place, after all, so it’s difficult to want to give them a different shape, which means that a story can tend more toward the rigidity of ossification.

I find when I work outside of the story in this manner, and especially in the slow ease of longhand, that nothing I write has to make it into the story. Still, I usually create a piquant scene or two, a more lyrical description here and there, and even figure out how to cut some of the bad stuff out.

It’s like a new, exciting kid has just moved next door and I’ve got a fun playmate. We run through the neighborhood without supervision. We feel the sweat on our bodies as if for the first time. We lose our breath from running.

I know that there will be revisions and more revisions, of course—and that sometimes it’s necessary to stay in the rut of the story for refinement’s sake, just to smooth those uneven surfaces. But this is one fun way to challenge a story, hopefully bring it to life in a way that a more workmanlike effort can’t.

On to revision tip no. 2,044, “Taking an Exotic Foreign Vacation to Revise Your Story.” I have to admit that this one is my favorite. Although 2,045 has its place: “Marrying Rich to Revise Your Story.”

On Revision

Revision Tip No. 2,043: The Art of Dancing to Guy Lombardo while Drumming to Mingus