Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Challenge with revision
One of my main challenges with revision is when to let things go and move on. It's easy to let it go when it is a school assignment, but personal work is something I keep working and tuning. It's that balance where the revision is just enough and it's time to work on other things. Miles Davis would create these great musical pieces and then move on, never looking at them again. I'd like to be satisfied with my work and then move on to something else. I want to write like Davis plays: “I'll play it first and tell you what it is later.”
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Horace, the Roman poet recommended waiting nine years. I guess that's fine if your goal is to make it in the history books. I guess the most important thing is that you (or I) eventually do move on to other pieces. You really can't loose that way.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you could create a set amount of time to put a piece away for awhile, such as waiting a few months. If you need something physical to reinforce this you could get a box and file each piece away under various months and dates when you can read them again, and see if you want to revise them more or not, to give yourself some distance from them.
ReplyDeleteAhhhh Miles Davis and the art of music with disassociation such a beautiful process of conclusion. Thanks for the thought.
ReplyDeleteI really like the Davis reference as well. I appreciate the correlation of working on a musical piece being very much like working on a piece of writing.
ReplyDeleteMusic and writing differ so much with respect to revising, however it all comes down to the same thing...its difficult to kill your babies. Whether they are literary, musical, or physical. Its just difficult to do.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a horrible thing to look back at what you've done and fine tune it so that it can work with the frame of mind you've developed in the process of your creativity. John Coltrane looked back at his cover of My Favorite things throughout his career and kept revising it to what type of music he was doing and managed to keep pushing the format of music in doing so. And as for literary references, Walt Whitman wasn't afraid to do the same with his work Leaves of Grass.
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