Revision. It’s not exactly the same as writing. Writing is hard, and writing consistently every day is harder. It’s an art.
But being steeped in revision is different than writing every day. You have to be a certain sort of artist to revise, one that’s willing to set yourself adrift in a sea of electric uncertainty. Electric because you have to be willing to let go of your favorite words and phrases, sometimes your favorite scenes, sometimes you favorite character that you have created. And that creates a shock — to be that ruthless, that takes courage, and that’s what this art of revison is about, the art of being completely honest with yourself. It’s a shock to be that honest. If you are resisting cutting that “little darling” as Faulkner called it, then what you’re really saying to yourself is: “I really love this extremely clever character, or this funny scene, this small individual thing, more than I love the big picture, the whole of the arc, the book as a whole.” Uncertainty comes into play because you as the writer are unsure that once you let go of the thing you like. And then you’re in the position of not knowing whether the thing you come up with replace what you’ve deleted will be any good.
Until you admit you have a problem, you will be unable to fix it.
I started out as a poet. I wrote poems for years before I wrote anything longer than a page — I appreciate the clever turn of phrase and the startling image or metaphor. Unlike my prose writing, I rarely revised a poem. I kind of cut and sewed as I went along and I didn’t think about it afterward.
Recently I wrote a poem that I showed to a friend, who had the temerity to tell me it wasn’t a great a poem. In fact, he had the nerve to tell me it needed work, that it wasn’t good enough. I was hopping mad for a while. A long while. Then I stopped muttering aloud long enough to consider what he was saying: that I had a good idea, that I had written down a “good start” and that I needed to work on the rougher spots on the poem. I just had to give it my complete attention and revise it.
And I have done so, much to my own chagrin. I hate to say it, but that poem got stronger with revision, and has just been accepted for publication. 🙂
Below is another set of poems, two that I’ve been tinkering on for what I think is forever, but it’s really been just a couple of days: I still don’t think they’re perfect, but to keep with Angie Powers’ “public, not perfect” mantra, I’m letting them go and watching them either fly or fall quickly to the ground below. 🙂
I’m practicing electric uncertainty.
argumentum ad captandum
I’d apologize but I’m broke flatter than a dime
on a hot sidewalk. I’d apologize but I’m hungry,
and in this light you look almost good enough to eat.
I’d apologize but my favorite clothes are on
the last spin cycle in the wash. I’d apologize
but you promised me the crescent above and the stars
that make up Cassiopeia and I have yet to see
a ring on my finger. I’d apologize but it’s not noon yet
and I haven’t had my vegetables, tequila or coffee
enough to jump start my brain for another day.
I’d apologize but the parrots in their cursed cages mock
me with their catcalls and whistles. I’d apologize but my lips
are chapped, my eyes are dim from the winter sun, and the canned
audience laughter from your TV set still peals in my ears.
Color-coded
What I want is a legend, not a superhero
or a soothsayer, not a purveyor of poisoned pens
or an ex-beauty queen smiling as she delivers
the death tolls, the now-silent-forever faces
rolling behind her in quick succession. Just a little
box, like the kind at the bottom right-hand corner
of every map. Not black and white either, I’m tired
of black and white. I’m tired of Roman rhetoric,
semantics and quid pro quo, false promises and pork
spending. I just want red and blue. Not red states or blue
states. No red letter, no blue light special, no angry
red welts, no blue blood, no rainbow coalition
or a chance to be “purple.” Plain apple-red and old
blueberry-blue. I want a legend that tells me
to take the highway, or canoe down river. Red
that means marriage, blue that means money and a way
out from the life our parents have had. Reds that name
our people, blues that are not only songs about regret.
Red as arteries, blue as veins, circulating through
and through. No more chalk outlines, no more blue steam
off the water. Legends that direct the body
as well as the soul, from the bloody vertebrae
to the air-starved coccyx, legends that have no halls
of fame or of shame, legends that direct us on what
we eat, where we sleep, people we love, and gods we pray to.