Apr 27, 2023·edited Apr 27, 2023Liked by Lev Raphael
Such an important topic, so nicely delivered. Thanks Lev and Becky. I especially like how you say revision can be rewarding, even joyful. For me, the only thing a first draft is good for is the voice, the POV, the basic inception of the piece. Though some first drafts are more fully realized than others, the actual work of writing occurs afterward. (I love Hemingway's comment that the writer at first gets all the bang out of a piece and the reader none, and that they must rewrite and rewrite until the reader gets the bang and the writer none. He also said, of course, "The only kind of writing is rewriting.") For a long time, my problem was getting lost in the weeds and losing touch with my original muse. So, I would add: revise, sharpen, develop, reveal, but only to make a piece truer not better. (Maybe, as you suggest, the measure for good editing is if it's joyful, as opposed to Sisyphean drudgery.) Thanks again. Important stuff.
yes of course. I wasn't clear. I meant "better" as in trying to meet some external homogenizing standard rather than staying true to your personal vision.
I will ask my computer to read my text out loud to hear it from a more distant perspective and just close my eyes and listen. It's a useful tool, even if annoying sometimes for mispronouncing words, because it reads what's on the page/screen, not what I think I put there.
I enjoy revisions. At present I have about a dozen poems that are works in progress and earlier pieces that I wrote when my abilities were not where they are now which I’m revisiting.
When I go back to a poem that I haven’t looked at in about six months I find that it’s like reading the work as though someone else had written it. That makes it so much easier for me to critique and rewrite.
That distance really helps, doesn't it? In the fall I returned to a novel I pus aside just before the pandemic and it surprised me: I had forgotten so much of the story that turning pages seemed like reading another person's book. That spurred me to write.
Lev, what a wonderful discussion of the writing activity I have come to love the best. Because I also work as an editor, I appreciate good editors (like Becky Tuch!) and learn from them. Depersonalization is key, I think. I have learned how to see my own work as "separate" from me in order to revise more effectively. Like you, I sometimes return to pieces that were already published and take another crack at them. May I add an item to your useful "call to action" list? Use magazine's calls for submissions as revision prompts: lately, I am more often returning to fallow pieces and revising them to respond to the specifications of lit mags. Indeed, soon a literary essay I wrote will be published by the lit mag of the University of Guadalajara and I revised it based on the theme of their issue. Of course, this style of revision cannot be forced; the organic connection between the theme and the work has to already be there. In this case, I saw how revising to theme provided a useful lens for me to draw out *elements that were already in the essay* and emphasize them, pop them into greater relief.
Terrific advice, Lev. I love revisions too. I love also cutting the fat, cutting the unecessary words, sharpening fiction and poetry until I get what I call the glow that I find in varying works- Virginiia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, Tom Kromer's Waiting For Nothing, Cymthia Ozicks' The Shawl, the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ann Sexton, Pat Barker's Union Street. I am currently doing a third polish on a novel about two Vietnam Vets who are selftaught artists and complete opposites,
Computers, overall, are an enormous blessing for writers. Remember when the electronic typewriters, and "BROTHERS" first made the scene and you could put your finger down and suddenly come up with three pages of writing? I think , for us elders, that the speed of computers which is great for those of us whose writing is zooming along, has a minus contained within - it encourages, almost by the nature of the beast, overblown and garrulous writing with many unecessary words. So I encourage friends, myself, students (Itaught for twenty years) to write it all out without stopping let the initial creative pour. Later, edit.Cut. Cut some more. Put it away. Look at it the next day. Cut some more. Go eat. Listen to music. Look at it. IIf it throbs and pulses, you are ready to move on. First drafts are where the inspiration soars. Revisions are where the artistry enters.
Whether it's a story or a poem, when the first euphoria of having "finished" something blows off -- then you're left with a nagging feeling. Something's not right; something askew is warping the piece out of its arc. Sometimes, especially with a poem, the problem can be no more than a word or two, an image or metaphor that scrapes at your unconscious. It can take days, even weeks, to understand that glitch, that awkwardness that keeps success at bay. When I taught creative writing at various colleges and universities, I always told my students who were stuck in the revision process to discard the sentence, the image or words that inspired the thing initially. Get past that, I instructed them, so the poem or story becomes something new and malleable and more "right." In other words, success in literature requires a bit (or a lot) of sacrifice, even if it means eliminating something you love and feel compelled to hang on to. Difficult, yes, but it gives the piece some breathing room, free from your compulsions.
Yes indeed, Fredric, you gotta kill those darlings or, as I used to say rather ghoulishly, shoot those pets. It's uncanny how the things we adore--words, phrases, entire passages--almost always need to be cut. I keep learning and relearning: If it feels precious, if it stands out, then it's not organic, not germane, and interferes with the flow of the greater thing you are doing--telling a story. First time I read a piece, the audience rarely laughs where I expect them to.
Sometimes, though, the "darlings" are worth keeping. I've been publishing fiction and essays for 40 years (yikes) and have come to know what should be scrapped and what shouldn't be. Recent case in point: I knew the last line of a memoir essay I just sold to The Smart Set was good as soon as I wrote it, but also knew the title of the first few drafts wasn't good, but kept it as a place holder until something better suggested itself.
Such great tips, Lev. Thank you for sharing. Generally, I enjoy revising. The image that often comes to mind is of a blacksmith hammering away at some steel to shape it the way it should be. Not quite right? Heat it up again and hammer it again until it takes its most natural shape. I find reading aloud works wonders. The eye is skilled but the ear is ancient and wise. Humans have listened to stories far longer than we've read them so the ear catches things the eyes doesn't. It was pretty laborious, but this summer I completed listening to my novel manuscript all the way through via the read aloud function in Word and making revisions. It took months, but it was well worth it. Viva la revisions!
Mag editors who ask for revisions these days (especially online pubs) are rare. I met one a few weeks ago and some of the notes irked me (I knew these editors were a lot younger than me, lol, I could tell from the reactions) but I buckled up and changed things, not the way they suggested, but my way. They forced me to think a little differently and the story ended up better for it.
There are also inexperienced or arrogant editors, eager to change one's piece simply because they have the power to do so. But that's a discussion for another time!
I just had that conversation with my husband, lol. The fact that some people must feel good and their existence validated when they get the writer to do what they ask for... a tiny minority, I'm sure!
You were lucky to get this sort of editorial attention. I’ve never had a lit magazine editor work with me on improving a story. It’s either acceptance or rejection.
I did have one editor who sent 2 pages that asked me to write like Balzac. I love his novels (though not as much as Zola's), but je ne suis pas Balzac.
Editor participation can be a mixed bag. I have had WONDERFUL editors at the better magazines and journals. I also had one editor who literally (I kid you not) wanted my sexy unicorn to become a plain old horse!
Like you, I didn't revise my short stories in undergrad, a little in grad school. After a lot of practice and some editorial feedback, revision now is my favorite part of the writing process.
Learning to revise my own work helped me when I was invited to teach at MSU, and then when I left to edit, coach, and mentor. Returning to work I like and making it more likeable, so to speak, never fails to thrill me. This morning I sent out an essay with a new last line that came to me in a dream and it's now a much better essay. Obviously, I had questions about the end that my unconscious answered. :-)
unlless it is someone with a sweet-tooth stomach who too often gets a bellyfull and has an unwelcomed expansive personality. That is why I try to avoid merry shoemakers, especially peach cobblers. They can be the pits.
As a retired teacher of composition and a one-to-one tutor working with students from 15 years old through graduate school and a poet and writer myself, revision is the heart of the matter for me. I am with you in savoring the transformation a piece undergoes in the process, becoming more wholly itself in the process. I love working with writers to help them realize this potential as well as revising my own pieces.
I taught ESL, Composition, Creative Writing among other things and working one-to-one is terrific, both rewarding and educational. It's made me a better writer and it's one reason I left MSU and started writewithoutborders.com where I can devote all my time working like that, helping writers.
Such an important topic, so nicely delivered. Thanks Lev and Becky. I especially like how you say revision can be rewarding, even joyful. For me, the only thing a first draft is good for is the voice, the POV, the basic inception of the piece. Though some first drafts are more fully realized than others, the actual work of writing occurs afterward. (I love Hemingway's comment that the writer at first gets all the bang out of a piece and the reader none, and that they must rewrite and rewrite until the reader gets the bang and the writer none. He also said, of course, "The only kind of writing is rewriting.") For a long time, my problem was getting lost in the weeds and losing touch with my original muse. So, I would add: revise, sharpen, develop, reveal, but only to make a piece truer not better. (Maybe, as you suggest, the measure for good editing is if it's joyful, as opposed to Sisyphean drudgery.) Thanks again. Important stuff.
Thanks. I guess to me better *is* truer. :-)
yes of course. I wasn't clear. I meant "better" as in trying to meet some external homogenizing standard rather than staying true to your personal vision.
Amen to that! And I thought you make an excellent point about not doing a gigantic overhaul but being more strategic.
I will ask my computer to read my text out loud to hear it from a more distant perspective and just close my eyes and listen. It's a useful tool, even if annoying sometimes for mispronouncing words, because it reads what's on the page/screen, not what I think I put there.
It's a great method, although I do with the tech folks would work on making those voices more listenable!
Microsoft just added new voices to its roster! Check it out!
I enjoy revisions. At present I have about a dozen poems that are works in progress and earlier pieces that I wrote when my abilities were not where they are now which I’m revisiting.
When I go back to a poem that I haven’t looked at in about six months I find that it’s like reading the work as though someone else had written it. That makes it so much easier for me to critique and rewrite.
That distance really helps, doesn't it? In the fall I returned to a novel I pus aside just before the pandemic and it surprised me: I had forgotten so much of the story that turning pages seemed like reading another person's book. That spurred me to write.
Love the writer/editor relationship you described, Lev. Wish I could get some to that. Must submit more!
We have to try.
Thanks, Lev. Great column. And you’re right, better is almost always possible.
Lev, what a wonderful discussion of the writing activity I have come to love the best. Because I also work as an editor, I appreciate good editors (like Becky Tuch!) and learn from them. Depersonalization is key, I think. I have learned how to see my own work as "separate" from me in order to revise more effectively. Like you, I sometimes return to pieces that were already published and take another crack at them. May I add an item to your useful "call to action" list? Use magazine's calls for submissions as revision prompts: lately, I am more often returning to fallow pieces and revising them to respond to the specifications of lit mags. Indeed, soon a literary essay I wrote will be published by the lit mag of the University of Guadalajara and I revised it based on the theme of their issue. Of course, this style of revision cannot be forced; the organic connection between the theme and the work has to already be there. In this case, I saw how revising to theme provided a useful lens for me to draw out *elements that were already in the essay* and emphasize them, pop them into greater relief.
I've done that too! Cool!
I love your enthusiasm. Few people get as thrilled by revision as you and I do, Lev. :)
I feel like a get a gift when I can re-enter a piece, find something new. It's the same on a smaller scale when I re-do a scene or even some dialogue.
We are the Writers of Re. :)
excellent. setting can also be monkeyed with to bring out latent qualities.
I've taught setting workshops and master classes--it's too often overlooked.
Terrific advice, Lev. I love revisions too. I love also cutting the fat, cutting the unecessary words, sharpening fiction and poetry until I get what I call the glow that I find in varying works- Virginiia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, Tom Kromer's Waiting For Nothing, Cymthia Ozicks' The Shawl, the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ann Sexton, Pat Barker's Union Street. I am currently doing a third polish on a novel about two Vietnam Vets who are selftaught artists and complete opposites,
Computers, overall, are an enormous blessing for writers. Remember when the electronic typewriters, and "BROTHERS" first made the scene and you could put your finger down and suddenly come up with three pages of writing? I think , for us elders, that the speed of computers which is great for those of us whose writing is zooming along, has a minus contained within - it encourages, almost by the nature of the beast, overblown and garrulous writing with many unecessary words. So I encourage friends, myself, students (Itaught for twenty years) to write it all out without stopping let the initial creative pour. Later, edit.Cut. Cut some more. Put it away. Look at it the next day. Cut some more. Go eat. Listen to music. Look at it. IIf it throbs and pulses, you are ready to move on. First drafts are where the inspiration soars. Revisions are where the artistry enters.
It's always easier to cut than expand.
Whether it's a story or a poem, when the first euphoria of having "finished" something blows off -- then you're left with a nagging feeling. Something's not right; something askew is warping the piece out of its arc. Sometimes, especially with a poem, the problem can be no more than a word or two, an image or metaphor that scrapes at your unconscious. It can take days, even weeks, to understand that glitch, that awkwardness that keeps success at bay. When I taught creative writing at various colleges and universities, I always told my students who were stuck in the revision process to discard the sentence, the image or words that inspired the thing initially. Get past that, I instructed them, so the poem or story becomes something new and malleable and more "right." In other words, success in literature requires a bit (or a lot) of sacrifice, even if it means eliminating something you love and feel compelled to hang on to. Difficult, yes, but it gives the piece some breathing room, free from your compulsions.
Yes indeed, Fredric, you gotta kill those darlings or, as I used to say rather ghoulishly, shoot those pets. It's uncanny how the things we adore--words, phrases, entire passages--almost always need to be cut. I keep learning and relearning: If it feels precious, if it stands out, then it's not organic, not germane, and interferes with the flow of the greater thing you are doing--telling a story. First time I read a piece, the audience rarely laughs where I expect them to.
Sometimes, though, the "darlings" are worth keeping. I've been publishing fiction and essays for 40 years (yikes) and have come to know what should be scrapped and what shouldn't be. Recent case in point: I knew the last line of a memoir essay I just sold to The Smart Set was good as soon as I wrote it, but also knew the title of the first few drafts wasn't good, but kept it as a place holder until something better suggested itself.
Such great tips, Lev. Thank you for sharing. Generally, I enjoy revising. The image that often comes to mind is of a blacksmith hammering away at some steel to shape it the way it should be. Not quite right? Heat it up again and hammer it again until it takes its most natural shape. I find reading aloud works wonders. The eye is skilled but the ear is ancient and wise. Humans have listened to stories far longer than we've read them so the ear catches things the eyes doesn't. It was pretty laborious, but this summer I completed listening to my novel manuscript all the way through via the read aloud function in Word and making revisions. It took months, but it was well worth it. Viva la revisions!
You're welcome! And yes, the ear is so important.
Mag editors who ask for revisions these days (especially online pubs) are rare. I met one a few weeks ago and some of the notes irked me (I knew these editors were a lot younger than me, lol, I could tell from the reactions) but I buckled up and changed things, not the way they suggested, but my way. They forced me to think a little differently and the story ended up better for it.
Mazeltov!
There are also inexperienced or arrogant editors, eager to change one's piece simply because they have the power to do so. But that's a discussion for another time!
I just had that conversation with my husband, lol. The fact that some people must feel good and their existence validated when they get the writer to do what they ask for... a tiny minority, I'm sure!
You were lucky to get this sort of editorial attention. I’ve never had a lit magazine editor work with me on improving a story. It’s either acceptance or rejection.
I did have one editor who sent 2 pages that asked me to write like Balzac. I love his novels (though not as much as Zola's), but je ne suis pas Balzac.
Editor participation can be a mixed bag. I have had WONDERFUL editors at the better magazines and journals. I also had one editor who literally (I kid you not) wanted my sexy unicorn to become a plain old horse!
Like you, I didn't revise my short stories in undergrad, a little in grad school. After a lot of practice and some editorial feedback, revision now is my favorite part of the writing process.
Learning to revise my own work helped me when I was invited to teach at MSU, and then when I left to edit, coach, and mentor. Returning to work I like and making it more likeable, so to speak, never fails to thrill me. This morning I sent out an essay with a new last line that came to me in a dream and it's now a much better essay. Obviously, I had questions about the end that my unconscious answered. :-)
I love it when my subconscious mind puts the perfect line into my head!
Isn't it fun?
Apologies to Lev. In future, please put author’s name in big block letters- in shocking purple!
No worries. It's purple day, I guess, a server at lunch said she liked my purple shirt. I think it's blue, but I thanked her just the same.
unlless it is someone with a sweet-tooth stomach who too often gets a bellyfull and has an unwelcomed expansive personality. That is why I try to avoid merry shoemakers, especially peach cobblers. They can be the pits.
Becky’s modesty and enthusiastic endorsement of the willingness to revise, is the hallmark of a real writer.
Hi Perle, just wanted to clarify that Lev Raphael is the author of this excellent piece. I am NOT an enthusiastic reviser, ha!
Thanks, Becky, for suggesting the subject. I loved writing it. And, of course, revising it. :-)
On behalf of Becky, I thank you. :-)
As a retired teacher of composition and a one-to-one tutor working with students from 15 years old through graduate school and a poet and writer myself, revision is the heart of the matter for me. I am with you in savoring the transformation a piece undergoes in the process, becoming more wholly itself in the process. I love working with writers to help them realize this potential as well as revising my own pieces.
I taught ESL, Composition, Creative Writing among other things and working one-to-one is terrific, both rewarding and educational. It's made me a better writer and it's one reason I left MSU and started writewithoutborders.com where I can devote all my time working like that, helping writers.