Exercise Your InkTank
It’s Really Revision
Is it because you’re lazy that you don’t revise—because you’re okay enough with what you’ve written not to care if your readers must struggle through the weak spots? Or is it because you’re afraid it’s too hard to revise, too dangerous, or too time-consuming? Is it because you yourself have not carefully read what you’ve written that you don’t revise? Or is it because you’ve formed an unhealthy relationship with the words as you’ve placed them on the page that you don’t revise—because you think they’re so precious, far too precious to disrupt? Is it because you believe that writing is a mystical magical process and that revision is clinical and evil process that you don’t revise? Or because you believe yourself to be a writing deity, a genius for whom revision is synonymous with weakness? Perhaps you’ve made the mistake of conflating proofreading with revision. They’re not the same, you know. Perhaps you don’t trust in your own facility with the language enough to revise, or perhaps you’ve never revised simply because you’re not sure what revision is. If I sound upset, it’s because I’m being theatrical. Oh, there’s a point: you must revise. None of your excuses are good enough not to revise.
If you’re having trouble, it might be helpful to think of revision as re-seeing or re-imagining. It’s about clarity and it’s about an awareness of the reader as a meaningful presence. Of course, grammar and mechanics are a part of it—you’ve got to keep the page clean. But beyond that, revision is about ensuring that the reader is never disrupted from the continuous dream of the story without a damn good reason. Disruptions can occur every level—the sentence, perspective, character, plot, voice, or even time—and they cause the reader to leave us. Once we lose them, they may never come back. We’ll be alone and unhappy and our writing won’t be getting any better any time soon.
Workshops can give you what your own eyes often can’t: a view from outside the storytelling. But you have to be prepared to lose much (sometimes almost all) of what you have on the page in order to move forward with your writing. Writing is a recursive process, after all. You learn more as you go along and you employ what you’ve learned. It’s hard work that will get you there—not magic, not luck, not even booze.
Please Re-see Me
In order that we might put a spotlight on revision, let’s think about workshopping the following excerpt and determining its strengths and weaknesses. Based on our conversation, we’ll then revise it on our own as individuals. Take the good and lose the not so good, even if the good is only a single word or an image.
Existing is about being unique. Existence, reality, essence, cause, or truth is uniqueness. The geometric point in the center of the sphere is nature’s symbol of the immeasurable uniqueness within its measurable effect. A center is always unique; otherwise it would not be a center. Because uniqueness is reality, or that which makes a thing what it is, everything that is real is based on a centralization. Seven years ago, I was about to become centralized. I couldn’t have known where it would take me, but I could have guessed that it would take me to the center. To her. To Maria. Her hair was the kind of hair that moved without actually moving. Her eyes were the kind of eyes that saw without looking. We came together in nature’s own mysterium and our essences became a reality. I’d never experienced anything like that before. When she left, it was as though the sky were eaten through with mold. Now she’s the center of another’s existence and the sky mold is eating through me.
No comments:
Post a Comment