Drawing the Chicken 2: On Revision
Re-vision. Bringing new eyes to old words.
Most people who can write do write. Over all the years I have been working with students, across ages and demographic groups, I’m yet to meet someone who has never in their life attempted a poem or a story. For many, this dies out by the time they hit college, or by the time they start work, but that early desire to tell one’s own unique part of the human experience — to put it down in some way, immortalise it even for a tiny fraction of the world— appears fairly universal. While it can be hard for many people to break through the initial hesitation to write, especially as they get older and wounds of self-criticism and external judgment have had time to firm up under their skins, those first words are still relatively easy. And they are often exhilirating, the first voicing of unvoiced things.
But very few people want to revise.
There is a rush, a creative high, to the first draft that isn’t really there in the revision process, the labouring over sentences, images, words, structure. There isn’t much of a rush in spedning a whole day editing a section, only to delete it altogether a week later. There isn’t even much joy on some days in moving paragraph 6 to coming before paragraph 3, redoing the transitions, and then realising it actually should come after paragraph 4. And sometimes, when you change the whole frame and have to begin a chapter again— there’s a lot of heartbreak in there.
And yet, I’m convinced that that’s where the real work of writing happens. Anyone can tell a story or compose the first draft of a poem, but it takes commitment and craft to revise them. And it takes a willingness to sit in discomfort, in not knowing. I’m teaching a course called Creative Revision right now, and in the first five weeks of the course, all of my exercises and readings point students to big what-ifs. What if I take this dark piece and add humour to it? What if I tell my story from my mother’s point of view? What if I slow the action down in this part or speed it up in that one? What if I rewrite this poem as a newspaper article? What happens then? I keep telling students to treat these five weeks as a time to play and explore, to let their creative process unfold in unpredictable ways. I keep reminding them that in the next five weeks, we will look at structure, at detail, even at edits, but that this period is simply their time to play, to discover.
Most of them struggle with this. A few of them search desperately for how this might make it into an end product they have already visualised, tell me they have already made these decisions. I keep pushing. But what if? I don’t want them to abandon their original visions, but I also don’t want them to cling stubbornly to them. I want to open up the possibilities of letting the writing grow, nuance, layer. And every so often, someone agrees to go down that road, and their journeys are always magical.
I’ve lost count of the number of students over the years who have refused to revise a piece even after significant feedback from me and from their peers: they tell me that the original piece feels truer to them, that that’s the way it came out first, but within their confidence, I always also hear a quieter, protective voice: this is my baby, and I’m afraid to hurt it.
Forgive me a pottery metaphor here, but for me, those first words on the page are simply the wedging of clay, perhaps the rough shape given to a mug or a bowl in three or four pulls on the wheel. A 5 inch cylinder of wet clay is not a mug— before it can become one, it must dry a little, then be trimmed, maybe get a handle, dry some more, maybe some carving, go through a bisque fire, maybe have some surface decoration, get glazed, go through another firing, cool down. Not all the initial cylinders will make it this far, and that’s okay. Not all of the surface decoration will work, or even show through on the final piece. Sometimes the pot will explode in the kiln. And all of that is a necessary part of the process of making a mug.
Revision is like that— taking the first, rough, unformed outpouring, and giving it shape. Brushing your poem’s hair, in some cases, or shaving it off in others. My favourite revision advice came from my graduate school thesis advisor: revise for greater honesty. I will sit with a poem for hours sometimes, trying to decide whether the blue hand is actually green, and what I’m looking for there isn’t a pretty metaphor but a deeper truth in me. If every thought as soon as you speak it isn’t necessarily your deepest truth, then neither is every word you wrote as you first wrote it. Taking the time to sit with your words and ask them what they really mean — that’s where the work begins.
If you’re still unconvinced, find your way to these sixteen drafts of Elizabeth Bishop’s villanelle “One Art.” Watch that poem come to life, tediously and gorgeously. And then see if you’re willing to take that risk with your own writing.