Revision is such a dirty word.
Especially when it is required as part of an assignment. Believe me, I do understand. I sympathize with students forced into this predicament, even though I assign it like every other teacher of writing does. I assign revision dates for workshops as though revision is good for you. Like vegetables.
A little closer to home, of course, and to offer evidence that I eat the vegetables I serve up to others, I’m just getting started, as the summer begins, on another revision of a memoir I began writing five years ago, after my son took his life.
This revision, what I’m doing now, is very different from an assignment, from writing imposed on me from the outside. This memoir is strongly the writing that I first had to do, then wanted to do. Over the last five years, I’ve revised the work several times, and each time it’s deepened and changed, even as the nature of my grief has changed. This summer, I feel in a position to finish it. That is, I hope to finish the final draft, not the process of my grief. I assume that will continue.
Revision is hard to do
I began this process of new revisions just yesterday, the first day of my summer with no meetings scheduled. I could work through the day. And, to be honest, getting started wasn’t easy. It’s always like this; beginning the process of revision can be the hardest part of all. Once it’s going, it expands on itself, multiplies, becomes very rewarding as I discover ever newer ideas and idea development. In fact, this is why I have argued that revision is perhaps best named re-writing, because revision often amounts to a lot of new writing.
But I admit that the start can be painful.
I take advice of Walter Mosby, the Los Angeles writer. Rereading your text can count as revision work.
Especially since I hadn’t been able to look at the last draft of my work since last November, six months ago, I started with Mosby’s suggestion, with reading. I read the opening material. And then the benefit of not looking at material for a while kicked in. Enough time had elapsed so that I could see strong and weak aspects to the earlier draft. I began to really slim down the first chapter, but also add new verbs and details.
This led to similar changes in the second chapter. The revision is leading me to shrink the draft. It was a longer draft than I wanted, at 216 pages. I hope to get rid of perhaps another 80 pages. I think that a book about grief should be shorter and perhaps written more in fragments, should resemble poetry.
That is my first writing goal for the summer. I hope to finish by this summer.
Revising. Re-seeing. Re-writing.
Of course, I won’t be finished with the grief. That will continue to change. Perhaps it will lead to new books and new revisions.