So one of the things I didn't get to cover in a poetry workshop yesterday was revision. Honestly, that might have been a way I ended up dodging a bullet. Teaching revision I find to be much more difficult than teaching writing, conceptualizing, approaches, and definitely more difficult than just helping someone produce 1 poem. So here's some pointers on what helped me get better at revising, and some philosophies that may be able to help others.
Problems Resulting from How Essay Revision is Often Taught
All too often the essay, the main form of writing taught in classes, is taught as a simple algebraic equation. Plug in a thesis, find three points along the lines of that thesis, and then give an ending that proves your thesis line works - an end that in many ways is not so much a development from the thesis but a repetition of it that is being passed off as something new.
The editing feedback a teacher gives is often along the lines of "fix your thesis," "better support your thesis," and small cosmetic treatments of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Bandaids and cover-up instead of helping the piece of writing to grow.
Besides the implication of this for how the essay, a potentially lively writing form, is taught, it also structures much of the thinking around writing in general, which carries over to creative work. I know that as a writer, especially when first really starting to take creative writing seriously, would mainly do spot checks when writing and believe I got it right. I believed my poem was revised and finished. (Wow was this holding me back!) A lot of this had to do with how the original writing felt like a creative process, and over limiting it by cutting/removing/changing felt anti-creative.
Revision, Too, is a Creation
Would anyone say that the sculptor, chiseling away at a giant block of stone, is not creating? Would anyone say that the ceramicist, adding on clay small piece by wet small piece, is not creating? Yet why do green writers, enthralled by the act of creating, often limit themselves to focusing on forming that original mass and then maybe polishing it a little? The simple answer, the one that I know was true for me up until, oh.... two years ago, is that the initial writing feels fun and exuberant, while revision feels like editing an essay in the simplistic middle school sense.
Like the sculptor chiseling away a rock to what it could be, or the ceramist adding on pieces to what is already there, the writer has the ability to continually create on what they already have. This should not stop at a first draft, but be a continued creation. Unlike the ceramicist or the sculptor who is limited physically in just how much they can add, take away, and remold, the writer has the potential to be most creative when exploring just what their work of art could become during the revision process.
It is a process. A process of continued creation, not so much of trying to get it "right" or "fixed", but get it better, and search in a million different directions to find out just what might make it better. And maybe create something separate and wholly new in the process.
Revision Explored as the Creation of an Outfit
This is one of the best ways I have found to describe it. Whether people do it well or not, they put together an outfit almost every day. The more articles you have too choose from, the more possible outfits that can be achieved. Think of individual elements of a poem such as tones, images, lines, phrases, characters, moments, rhythms, etc... as individual articles of clothing. My favorite pair of shoes have graphics of Batman on them. My favorite pair of pants is covered in paint from a summer volunteer gig 5 years ago and has a rip in one knee. My favorite button down shirt is striped in blues, browns, and blacks. My favorite cardigan is a grassy green. Obviously, while all have merits on their own, they are not going to work well together as an outfit. In much the same ways, different elements of a poem in draft may have to be sacrificed for a more successful, cohesive overall poem. When putting together an outfit I will think about who I will be with (audience) and what type of places/events we will be at (genre/topic/setting). From there I will keep in mind a favorite article of clothing or two that works with said people and places and pick the other parts, from all the ones I have to choose from, around that. And this is a basis of my revising process. I will come up with many lines, images, ideas, and possibilities for a poem. But then when it comes down to it, I pick the best ones that work with what the poem is going for, the effects I want it to have on an audience, and the elements of it I know to be truest. And then the rest is picked and rebuilt around it. Pick and play around for tones, vibrancy, contrast, textures, emphasis, and to explore what could be.
Revision as a Continued Journey
There are topics I have tried to write about over and over and have just not gotten the poem out of it that I think works. Normally, that tends to be a sign not of me being limited but of the continued work I am doing to stretch my range. Possible tangent aside, I may explore a topic/character/moment idea a lot in different poems written around the same time or different times. I may try and revise one and then just sit on it. And then I write something much better 8 months later which I later realize to be informed by the first poem(s) I tried to write. And then I keep working on another poem which I still haven't quite gotten where I want it to be. Two poets I know, Usman Hameedi and Simone Beaubien, will have poems they've been performing for years that sound just a little bit different, or sometimes more than a little bit different, every time I hear them. And always better. Revision is not a rush to an end, but a continued part of the writing process.
But So what? And How can this help other parts of life?
The point, if there is one main point to this, is that writing is a continued process of creation. Revision is a way to continue that creation, not the fencing in of a creation. This relates not only to creative writing, but everything from the outfit you put on and how you put it together, to the creation of essays and other more typically analytic writing. Push the boundaries of what it could be. Explore what is really important. Explore what could be there. And then continue creating.
In closing, Don't Stop Believing. (In your continued creativity.)
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