I Confess: I Love Revisions

Author takes us through his revision process and offers strategies

Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.

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Anne Lamott has said that revision is the heart of writing and I agree: revision is where a more complex and multi-faceted level of writing happens, where you get the chance to craft those early impressions into something much more polished. 

I didn't revise much in my undergraduate creative writing classes or even in my MFA program, but everything changed dramatically when I started getting short stories published in the 1980s.

I was in love with the genre, reading widely from Poe and de Maupassant to Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield on to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gordon Lish, Alice Adams, Mavis Gallant and many more. I saw my future as a short story author--what could be better? My most potent material at the time had barely been mined by other American writers: the lives of Holocaust survivors and the legacy their children lived with. 

Being a native New Yorker, I had very New York ideas of success: if you were a literary writer, then you had to publish with the most prestigious literary magazines on the way to snagging a contract with Knopf or Scribner's. National magazines were also a must and that dream came partly true with my first publication, but what followed was a five-year drought. All of the magazines I read and admired rejected my short stories. So I turned elsewhere thanks to new geography.  Having moved to Michigan, I found my POV changing and I asked myself a simple question: "Who's your audience?" The obvious answer was American Jews. Once I started sending my fiction to Jewish magazines and newspapers, the stories were praised and accepted.

Things happened so fast that at one point--pre-Excel spreadsheets--I lost track of my submissions and a newspaper published a story that a magazine had already accepted and scheduled. The two editors knew each other and it was very awkward for me.  I apologized profusely to the “original editor” who was very nice about it: she didn't scrap the story but waited six months or so and printed it in her magazine too.

I wasn't just thrilled to be accepted, what buoyed me was the human connection with people in the world of publishing. I got editorial attention that was invaluable, whether in notes or on galley proofs. I enjoyed the feedback, but more than that, I enjoyed seeing the work from outside before I plunged back in to revisit the piece in question. I never assumed that every editorial suggestion was right. Still, if I decided against a suggested revision, I had to figure out why and explain my reasoning to the editor in question.

I found it exciting to re-enter a story or essay and just tinker with it in some cases and do major repair work in others: fuss with dialogue, deepen description, tighten a scene. I was living the joy of having written the story in a whole new way, and learning how to be a better writer too. Sometimes the revisions happened like jazz riffing when the editor and I would be on the phone together. Once, that led to the two of us coming up with a powerful last line to an anthology story that I hadn't realized needed a last line.  his same editor told me, without mentioning any names, that many of the authors in the anthology fought him over even the slightest change.  He said I was “an easy edit.”

Not so long ago, a Dutch anthology editor solicited a story from me but when he read it, he said what I knew to be true: it needed to be expanded and clarified. I lost count of the exact number of revisions I did, but there were easily half a dozen and the story got better and deeper with each exchange of emails. I stuck with it because I knew his insights were right, I knew that he could help me carve something artful out of what was only promising.  And in the end, the story was twice as long as the draft. That story needed outside guidance to be completely itself, to find its true shape and meaning.

Revision takes patience and a willingness to consider alternatives, whether they're offered by an editor or you're acting on your own. I want my work to shine and even all these years later, I'm not reluctant to keep polishing because I've seen enough times how much better a story or essay can be when I let it go for a while and return with new eyes. I’ve worked with so many editors that even with only a short break, I can usually see what the story or essay is missing, what elements need to be punched up and what needs to be trimmed. 

Having taught creative writing at the university level and worked with writers via my website writewithoutborders.com, I can step back and ask myself what I would tell one of those writers if it was their piece we were looking at. Sometimes the only change is a title or an opening line, but what a difference that can make. 

The South African writer Sheila Roberts once told me that she thought there were few pleasures deeper and more sensual than putting one word next to another--and then another. For me, revision is just that: not work, not obligation, not a hassle, but one of the writing life's lasting pleasures.

But what do you do if you hate revising?  What strategies can you use? 

• You can step back and gain some objectivity by asking yourself "What would I tell a fellow writer this piece needs?" 

• Try sharing the work with a writing colleague who will see it differently than you do--but only if it's someone you trust.

• A writers’ group can also be helpful with revisions if the group is respectful and constructive. 

• Sometimes you just have to put the work aside and focus on another project, something new and more exciting than returning to a story, essay, or poem that feels finished, but really isn't. 

• Working on another piece of writing already underway can both give you a break and stimulate your “little gray cells.”

• Turn to your favorite writers, the ones who have inspired you, and immerse yourself in voices that can keep you on track.

• Reading the work aloud can also be helpful because you're experiencing it in a different way and may see things you miss on the screen or the printed-off page. 

• Try refocusing your attention away from writing to something physical like going for a swim or a run. That can free your mind while making you feel better too. Maybe it would be a good time to clean out the closet that's gotten out of control. You'll get something accomplished and it makes for a nifty metaphor.

If you're lucky, and you give it time, you might eventually recapture some of the original fire, the delight of that first good draft, and even feel curious about what shape the final draft will take. In the end, it’s important to be humble about approaching our own work and remember that nothing we write is perfect or even close to perfect--but better is almost always possible.

So, do you enjoy revisions or do you dread them? Or are you somewhere in between?

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