All Writing is Rewriting

I used to think that the main challenge of writing was in the drafting, and it is definitely a struggle some days. There are times when the Muse is feeling generous and dispenses a phrase or a sentence with minimal effort, and there are indeed days when ever word has to be reluctantly chiseled out of my brain and laid out on the page like a cadaver. Those days are especially hard on the Creator part of the brain, and it's in learning to keep creating through that obstacle that is a fundamental, necessary skill. Write on the good days, write through the bad. "Not feeling it" or "not inspired" are soft, comfortable excuses, and my solution to that (if you can call it a solution) is to have a buffet of ongoing projects to select from. Don't feel like working on the novel today? OK, how about going through the latest beta reader feedback? Or doing some character-building for that WIP idea? Or working on this blog? (Oh, hello.) Keeping the Creator going is a steady bargaining act: I'll clear the space, if you get something down.

Don't tell the Creator, but I think the real work is in the Revision. And this isn't particularly revelatory, and I've cribbed this post's title from that old chestnut: "all writing is rewriting." What I have only recently learned is how that is true. Specifically, how the Revision phase works.

I thought, originally, that it was like drafting, that is, start at the beginning, proceed through the piece, and then stop. (Side note: I have, until recently, drafted in "story order" as well.) I saw Revision as a large one-and-done operation, cracking open the draft and going line by line and scene by scene and chapter by chapter, jolting the cadaver with various levels of story amperage until it came to life, and then moving to the next line/scene/chapter to do the same. A linear polishing process, with increasingly finer levels of grit applied. But this isn't realistic, not for revising a story, and not for polishing anything, either.

What realigned me was George Saunders' excellent A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, which aside from an excellent analysis of Russian short stories, contains his own approach and process of revision. If you haven't read the book, I recommend it, and if you want the good stuff, I'm going to do a poor job of summarizing, but in two words: brief iterations. I'm no stranger to the word "iteration" as it's a common term and process in my own tech field, where we hew out a rough solution to a problem, and then loop over it with a stakeholder or customer until it's tuned. When I read that section from Saunders, I was both thrilled at the advice, and angry that I didn't recognize it from my day job.

All writing is rewriting, but all writing does not also look like "drafting." It doesn't have to be a massive mountain-moving operation, involving months of research and agony and endless total rewrites. It's also fine--forever fine, there are no rules--to make a Revision look like tiny tweaks. Moving the mountain by small spoonfuls, and just focusing on the small, immediate lump before us. I would get very much daunted by the idea of a full revision which to me felt like seeing the whole complete, polished picture in my head and then reaching to that ideal. Instead, this notion of iteration means I can be as broad or narrow as I like in that moment, or as the Muse feels agreeable to. Like the bargain with the Creator, there's also the bargain with the Revisor.

So, what do we feel like today? Looking for themes? Checking for consistent character movement towards their goals? Or maybe something gentler: let's figure out what type of tree the "good old tree" was on top of Haint Hill. Let's go grab some notes on the gait of horses so we know the difference between Arrow's "trot" and a "canter" and which would be the more likely in this scene. Let's do a find-and-replace for my crutch words ("almost" "nearly" and "sometimes" are the worst culprits when I draft.)

By definition, the first draft can only come once. The sculptor's marble can only be quarried from the mountain a single time, and every single touch afterwards falls under the category of shaping. So it is with the writing, too. That initial crude blast gives way to the revisions and refinements, but every day isn't a hammer-and-chisel day.

🧩🦏