Revision

In all honesty, I think my greatest challenge with revision is knowing when to stop.

That magical level of subtlety that inspires readers to approach a piece with both eyes open can easily be lost with too much muddling. I second guess myself into doom and clarify my metaphors and themes to the point where there is no space for interaction with the work. No chance for different readers to have different reactions.

I understand this to be a two part problem: First, I often begin with a message that interests me and build the story around it (this is a decidedly backwards approach that I am constantly trying to outgrow) and second, I can't seem to get a fix on my audience's comprehension level.

Since the first problem is with my process, I'll focus on the second, which seems more appropriate to a discussion of revision.

I'm just not sure how to arrive at a better understanding of my audience. I have serious issues with approaching my writing from an objective perspective. Reading out loud and distributing my drafts to as many people as possible both help, but I just can't internalize an audience.

My workshop group helped me with this problem somewhat, whether they know it or not. I've begun to realize that readers aren't enticed to approach a story analytically by the clarity of the story's messages, but by the potency of its images. I'm definitely excited to see the change this observation makes in my writing.

revision

When I am feeling blocked with a certain piece or in need of another perspective, I like to use a techinque I learned in another creative writing class. It's very simple. I just rewrite what I've written exactly the same, but from another POV. For example, if I wrote it in the first person, I'll rewrite it in the second or third. Sometimes just changing the perspective can make the character seem different and new. Sometimes it illuminates characterisitcs that can then be elaborated on. Or perhaps show some phrases to be unnecessary.

REVISION....

Writing dialogue is a challenge for me. So when it comes time to revise my work, I often find myself frustrated because I can’t pin down the character’s “voice”. A method of revision that I am currently attempting is one a substitute instructor (in one of my other classes) suggested. Basically, I am writing down my rants (opinions, thoughts, etc), then assigning the dialogue to each character. After, I’m butchering my sentences so that they’re not so neat. I just started editing a few days ago, so I really can’t verify how effective it is, but hopefully it continues to help me tackle dialogue. In the project I’m working on, it has been working well.

- K. De Melo

My Take on Revision

Reading through all these posts on revision, I am struck by how similar we creative writers seem to be at heart. We despise revision; we need it; we yearn for it; we avoid it; we bite the bullet and go through with it; we think it's bullshit; we see it gets results; we see that revision is the key to all of our future dreams of excellence; we still despise it, despite it.

With all of these collective mixed feelings about revision, I had to look deep into my own heart and face the truth of revision for myself: it's really only something I practice on school assignments for class. Because something is due. At this point in my life, the sad truth is, I just don't have the time or energy to go through each and every one of my millions of Word files saved on hard drives, floppy discs, CD-ROMs, or even email messages. I don't have the heart to revise.

Revision is much like declaring war on an enemy in a political sense, except that the enemy is actually your own writing, and you are supposed to love your writing. This is hard because, in a war, you are supposed to hate your enemy. And often, your own writing feels so much like an enemy, trying to sabotage you, trying to take all of your resources. To revise is to commit yourself utterly to the drab and depressing fate of searching endlessly for the perfect comma, the perfect word, the perfect sentence structure. To seek that right line in the right spot in the right paragraph is difficult at best; to find that perfect word for the sentence is even harder. To go back in time and memory to try and remember just what your thought process was when you wrote a garbled paragraph is a nauseating affair; we have all been there, trying to fix a continuity mistake and realizing, there is no way to fix this without having to tear it all out and start back from scratch.

Perhaps I speak only for my own self, but revision is a scary process that is best handled with a vice of some sort: caffeine, cigarettes, alcohol, chocolate... whatever floats your boat. Anything to help pass those hours in front of a computer screen, trying to make the puzzle pieces of your literary genius fit together.

Revision Challenge

The challenge I find with revision is the approach. Where do you begin? The piece can hang in front of you, mocking, hissing, and beating its unfinished or unrefined chest bleating at me. I take deep breaths and think that it's probably better to begin something new, just move on bud there's nothing here for you. But I think about a Tom Waits interview where he says that he treats each song like it's its own entity; one's a fireman, the other is a doctor, another is a school teacher. I think that my story has a life to it (dead as it may seem) or my poem has a pulse and that they have SOMETHING of ME in them. So I breathe again and attempt something like the following:

I think one of the best, and one of my most favorite ways of revising (or even preparing) is to sit down before I begin (or begin again) a piece and starting to draw out a scene or characters. This is literal. Take out a blank piece of paper and start to draw a character you are working on or an image from the piece. One of the methods I also use is to start a film (hopefully something with with interesting imagery or characters), at any point in the story and pause on a scene or character you enjoy and start to draw them or it in great detail. Drawing is meditative and clearing, it also can get your imagination working in new ways.

Revisions

It's tricky.

The typical instruction one would hear in the case of revisions would be how you need to be entirely objective about your work in order for you to really see what it is whether it be a piece of shit or something that requires a few sentences to be arranged differently to make it sound better. Objectivity is definitely something to strive for, but it's nothing you can achieve after a day or two from finishing your work. As time heals all wounds, it can also heal your work. With what the class is doing in terms of revisions, it's a good idea that we've had a good length of time between what we need to do and the amount of time we're given to look at our work. If we were to revise our works a day after writing them, there wouldn't be that many revisions, and you'll likely find yourself in a position of sucking your own cock on the accomplishments you did with your writing. Wait a longer time, you'll realize what may or may not be the wreckage you managed to type out on your computer.

Your ego is the target in doing all this since it's that very thing that can easily ruin you. Remember that we are what we think. If you were to step outside ourselves and see how hard you're getting at reading your our own work, then you'll notice what you really are, you ego-maniac.

Revision

I don't know that I have a method for revision per se, but I do constantly make revisions to my work. I think the best way to revise your work is not to trust your instincts, and not to stay in your comfort zone, and not to trap yourself into ideas just because they're awesome or neat or whatever. I think it is good to know what works; I think it is bad to do what you know works already. If you aren't trying to do something new, you're pretty much just jerking yourself off. Revision is tricky and hard, and you have to step carefully, but you also have to know when to jump, kind of like Indiana Jones. One nice thing about revision is that for some small part of it, there are rules (sometimes): I refer to spelling, grammar, and the like. Of course, you could be writing in dialect, in which case that all goes out the window, but I think those things have their own set of rules - otherwise there's no way anyone could recognize or understand them.

Basically my idea about revision is not to expect anything fantastic to jump out at you, but to search for ways to make every little part better, and after you do that for a while, eventually there will start being synchronous circumstances between parts just because the same person wrote both of them, and that's when you know shit is really coming together.

revision-honestly, i suck at it.

i hate revision, mainly because i suck at it. honestly, i often wait to the last minute to do just about anything. for some reason i can't get things done until i am under pressure. this means some of my ideas may not be fully developed. and perhaps that's why it all just sucks. but my mind may also be a culprit, since i swear its all over the place, i might have a.d.d. i also believe that my revision skills suck because to be completely honest here i am not confident in anything i write, yes sad. still, these are no excuse to skip the step of revision. so what i often do is, re-read it, first to myself, then out loud. i find that reading anything out loud helps and it is even more helpful if you are reading it to someone so they can point out any parts that may need a re-work. i also like to send it out to some of my friends so they can read it and suggests things. lastly, i've found just setting the piece aside completely whether it is "done" or not. i usually come back to it, eventually, and when i do it can turn into something completely different. one last thing, that just came to mind, i often take individual feelings and emotions in my writing and try to describe it in a way that no one can actually pin point the thing im actually talking about. doing this helps me to revise my writing too, it gives me more than one perspective.

First Thought - On Second Thought.

I hate revision... that is until I actually start doing it. I'm very of the mind "first thought, best thought", but that doesn't always get you there and you and me both know it. I don't really have a "method" for revising my work, other than the fact that I always start with the grammatical errors and misspellings. I find that if I get these out of the way then I can see what's wrong with the story itself, the holes in continuity, the details that I missed or couldn't see the first time through. My biggest challenge with revision is the actually starting it part. I have so many poems and ideas for short stories in my documents folder that I haven't even touched since I first wrote them. I always find that when I actually do look them over, sometimes I'm surprised at how much I actually got down, and sometimes I'm surprised at how fucking horrible they are. Ugh! Regardless, there's always something to do once I get in there. My only "advice", if you can call it that, is just do it. Even if that story or poem or play is a piece of shit now, there might be a diamond hiding in there somewhere that just needs some care and attention.

Ahhh...Revision.

I am terrible at revising my works. I generally spend an immense amount of time researching for the piece, and by the time it's over, the thought of changing it is dreadful. However, it is necessary!

What I like to do is to take the original pieces and delete everything but a sentence. Then rewrite the story using the surviving sentence, creating a fresh perspective. Then repeat the process. Ultimately, I combine the working elements from each specific rewrite.

Taking days to recharge, between each revision, helps bring in new perspectives as well.

Thoughts on Revision

Revision, for me, is on par with beginning a piece as the most daunting aspect of the writing process. This may be a product of vanity, but I often think that laboring over punctuation or finding the perfect word is exhausting and in opposition to the whole creative ideal that I strive for. I recognize that most drafts are "shitty first drafts," I understand that fine tuning is essential, but for the most part I detest attempting to polish something that I've written. What I do enjoy about the process is going over what I've written previously and finding what strikes me, what compels me to write more. It could be one sentence out of a whole piece, but if that sentence actually moves me, it becomes less of a chore and more an exercise in crafting something new around the part that I love. Reading out loud to myself has proven to be a very effective means of determining whether something is worthy, or whether it is two pages of bullshit with one viable sentence. I would love to imagine myself as one of the gifted few who write brilliant drafts without the need for any tinkering, but this is a fantasy that wouldn't be doing me any favors. Spending that extra time with something that I've written leaves me with much more invested, and an appreciation for the prose that I may not have had if I just wrote it and left it alone. I ultimately have to remind myself on a regular basis to seek out the joy I feel for writing in the process of revision, because the end result is a more critical eye and a strengthened piece.

Garbage

Revision will be the death of me. It deflates my self confidence as a writer. I usually read through my work and when a part strikes me, I try to enhance it. There isn't much to my revision process. I change a word, add a paragraph delete a page. I get so frustrated after reading my piece of garbage several times and every word choice and sentence sounds juvenile and simple. After procrastinating and editing, I turn against my work and grow to despise it. There comes a point in the revision process when I want to set fire to my little darling and listen to its screams.

-sarah

Training a Winner

I have found that after examining my piece too extensively, I simply become bored and encouraged to start something new. I feel like the ultimate goal of revision is to polish a piece of writing--however, if I cannot see my piece from a fresh perspective every time I sit down to revise, I really don't see the point. Sometimes it just feels like I'm beating a dead horse, when ideally, it should feel like I'm racing a young stallion. I believe that if a horse isn't born to win a race, there is no point in training the shit out of it in an attempt to do so. Instead, buy a new horse--start over from square one. After all, no matter how incapable the first horse was, it is likely to have taught you a thing or two about how to train a winner. This tends to be how I approach the craft of writing: start strong and make it easier for yourself in the end.

Re(procrastination)vision

My biggest problem with revision is getting started. More often then not my writing comes in caffeine-fueled bursts at odd hours of the day (sometimes I like to get up at 7 a.m. and write or sometimes I like to stay up until 3 a.m. to get my writing done, I'm a morning person.). In short I sometimes find it difficult to write with purpose. This method (or anti-method?) has made me an expert in procrastination. I think part of this aversion to revision has something to do with fear; fear of what? Fear that instead of a story with a well-structured plot, interesting characters and superb dialogue I will open my laptop to find a big steaming piece of poop sitting innocently where my story should be (metaphorically speaking). After this realization that I in fact cannot write comes the stages of grief in rapid succession: Denial, what? who wrote this? not me! someone most have broken into my apartment and rewritten this, Guilt, oh God I'm going into debt to get a degree in creative writing what the hell was I thinking? someone out there deserves to be a creative writing major but not me...Anger/Barganing, OK Missy just revise a paragraph, one little paragraph isn't that bad, you're a goddamn creative writing major after all! then comes Depression, this is where I cut off all ties from the world telling friends and family alike "I have to revise" "No Grandma I can't come to your birthday party, I have to revise" "Sorry cute guy on the bus I can't go on a date with you, I have a lot of revision to do." Etc. And that's pretty much where the phases of grief stop in my procrastination trajectory (but wait that's only FOUR stages of grief, what about the other three? Well the last three stages of grief are: "The Upward Turn," "Reconstruction," and "Acceptance" which would lead to me revising and that would defeat the whole purpose of procrastination.). Being stuck in the 4th stage of grief often means I need some cheering up so obviously I have to look at pictures of baby animals or cats with funny stuff on them, I also have to google what the 7 stages of grief actually are. These mental gymnastics to get out of actually working and then going on to be a prolific writer and productive person in general can get pretty exhausting at which point I tell myself that maybe it's time to go to bed, but I can't becuase I've had like twenty cups of coffee in the hope that I would revise, so I can either clean my apartment or work on that craft project I've been putting off... speaking of which, there are some videos on Youtube I've been meaning to watch...

revision revision revision

One of the problems I've had with revision comes from the advice to leave a piece alone for a little while and come back with a fresh mindset, presumably take it on from a different angle and bring something new to it. I've done this; put something away (it was a story), and then, a month later come back to it, only to find I've lost any feeling for it. I came back and thought, "well this thing is hopeless," so there has to be some middle ground, like maybe I should have stopped writing the thing but kept thinking about it, or perhaps it actually was hopeless, and it was good of me to recognize that and move on. Either way, that method didn't work for me. It sounds reasonable, though...

Revision, Revision, Revision

I face trouble with revision and it is odd to me. I very much like and appreciate constructive criticism and when its for something analytical, by all means I embrace it. However with creative writing it is so much more difficult. It's not that I don't like the suggestions it's just that as the writer I feel like you see it being great as is. Or certain aspects a reader doesn't understand, your convinced in your head that it's perfect. That it's meant to be the way it is for a reason. The relationship between a writer and their piece of work is definately an "It's Complicated" one. I feel like sometimes your not particularly sure what your suppose to do and sometimes you just have to break up with the piece. Other times you can work on it and make it exactly how you wanted. & lastly there are those few that are just right the first time. Those one's are the golden eggs for sure.

In order to get through revisions...

...I put away the piece I am trying to revise. I take into account the feedback I've been given and try to write a complete seperate piece based off of that feedback. During this process of writing a new piece I often get my "aha" moment and open back up the original piece. If I happen not to get my "aha" moment I put it away for another day unless it is deadline. Say it is deadline I'll just T.C.O.B. and hope for the best.

A challenge I have to revision....

is difficult to say. Well, to be honest--I feel like I never really revised something I've written. What I thought was revising was probably just editing. In my next upcoming revising projects, I imagine utilizing the morning paper to widen my story's perspective and get ideas. One thing I like about revising (which some people call editing) is looking over my word choices. I like the idea of letting something I've written rest even for a few years not out of laziness, but just to see how my writing style has grown and with experience, I can offer something else to it. Combining pieces is another idea. With my upcoming revision projects, I will definately have a better idea and more thoughts on what I think about revising.

Revision - Rewriting

Whenever I have to revise a piece, I have a hard time going back into it. After I put the effort into writing it the first time, I don't like to go back to that emotional state or place I was in when I wrote it. One thing I've found helpful is to completely re-write the piece without looking at the original. It can be stressful and hard to put all the energy into another piece, but it really helps to be able to pick and choose what works best in each story.

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.”