You Can See That Again! (AKA, An Intro to a Series on Revision)

One time, when I was a kid—middle school aged, maybe—I took a writing standardized test, and failed.

The teacher got in touch with my Mom to talk about it, because they were both initially perplexed by this. Writing has been my “thing” ever since I could do it (and even kind of before I could do it, as the stories my Dad carefully transcribed and typed out for me when I was three or four indicate…), and I’ve always been a strong test taker.

“She didn’t prewrite,” the teacher said.

“I didn’t need to,” I replied, with all the ego of a preteen wordsmith. And I was, in that instance, not wrong. Unfortunately.

The truth is, I’ve never been much for outlining, planning, or preparing. Sometimes I’ll jot down some bullet points so that I don’t lose track of them, but mostly, I’m a gardener. I cultivate ideas and tensions and relationships and watch them grow. I’m a pantser in the worst way—oh, hey, look at that turn of phrase I just made, I’ll say to myself. That’s not at all what I thought this character was about, but cool, let’s say that’s real. How does that play out?

And all along, this has worked out pretty well for me. I never really got called out for my lack of planning, not even during three years of an MFA. And because an MFA is focused on workshopping “clean” drafts, and only occasionally even “revising” them, I never got called out for the other work I didn’t do, either—the back-end part of writing. The postwriting.

Yes, if you haven’t guessed yet (and how could you?), this is a blog post that will kick off a series of indeterminate length about revision.

As I taught my creative writing students, to revise means, literally, to see again.

It isn’t about fixing comma splices and repeated words and spelling errors. Revising is about taking the manuscript you’ve written and seeing it with fresh eyes and new perspective and turning it into art.

Just like I was a pretty terrible outliner (and am learning, still, the price of this negligence), I was a pitiful reviser. I’d read and reread my work, shifting a few things around. Occasionally I’d do some cutting or moving around, but that was about as violent as my editorial work ever got.

And then I wrote this book, and I knew it had problems I didn't want to acknowledge, and I knew I could try to fix them, but I didn’t know how. It's a thing that seems to have been omitted, practically speaking, from ever being taught. Somehow we're supposed to just figure it out on our own.

And here’s the thing, friends. It was really, really tempting to say that this version of things was the best I could do. That it was as clean and solid and well-constructed as I could make it. After all, hadn’t I already done my best work, all along? For weeks, months, years? Hadn’t I already put down the best words I could find to tell this story?

I had! How could it possibly get any better when I'd already given it everything I had?

And that inner monologue became a striking craft lesson for me.

Writers don’t fail to revise because they think they’re all that and a bag of chips. Writers fail to revise because they’re worried they can’t get any better.

It’s not a conscious fear. It’s not like we sit around staring at the words we’ve written going, “Well, that’s total garbage.” At least, not 100% of the time. We like to say we believe in the potential for growth and improvement, but I think deep down, we each harbor a concern that this is as good as it gets.

Take, for instance, the common advice that you should literally, totally, from a blank page rewrite your book (This is advice we’ll talk about in this series, I promise). I think the real reason people don’t do this isn’t because they think it’s too much work. I think the reason they don’t do it is because they honestly believe that the version they’ve put down is the best they’ll ever do.

Why do I think that?

Because I thought that, myself. And sometimes, I’m still tempted to think that. And statistics would generally say it's unlikely I'm the only one.

I am ashamed to say that I was in my thirties and had already been teaching University Creative Writing, begging my students to revise their work, when I finally figured out that my work, too, needed revision.

I am not, after all, an exception to this rule I was teaching.

The realization wasn’t the slow seeping kind that I’ve had about other bad habits (like, oh, my failure to prewrite!). The realization hit like lightning. I wrestled with my plot and my book and my characters and suddenly, one day, saw new paths through the work I’d done that were fresh and exciting and tight and practically shimmering on the page with their potential.

And you know what? I didn’t feel bad that I hadn’t seen those things before.

I felt completely ecstatic that there was some way to make this behemoth better. To make the book everything I'd hoped it could be. I hadn't admitted to myself that I was worried I just couldn’t do it.

The simple reality is that I needed to revise it. To see it again. To put fresh eyes on it and bring all that I’d learned over the course of writing it to bear on its pages. I was a different writer looking at the manuscript from the finish line than I was in the midst of the journey, and that writer? Shockingly, she knew how to do things that the other version of myself didn't.

It is thrilling when you start to rewrite and revise and the story works like magic. It’s like someone erasing friction. Like being able to run without your knees aching. Like how easy it is to breathe when you finally get some decent decongestants.

You feel like a superhuman version of the writer you are, because you’re operating on an entirely different continuum than you were before.

This is my exhortation to you at the gates of my probably-needs-revision blog series on revision:

Give yourself the benefit of superpowers. Believe that your next version of your book Is going to be better than the current version of your book. Amaze yourself with how good you actually are!

Revise.

Re-see.

If you’re willing to try it, to be aggressive with your work in a way you haven’t been before, I can literally guarantee you—I’d put money on it if I had any!—that your work will get better in ways you couldn’t predict.

And no, I’m not leaving it there. We’re gonna walk through some of the revision tactics I’ve found most useful over the past year.Post script: I got to retake the test, by the way, because I was lucky enough to have parents and a teacher who really believed in me and who made things happen I couldn’t have on my own. And you know what I did? I wrote that essay without prewriting—then I wrote an outline of what my essay turned out to be. So…relevant details: A) I didn’t know reverse outlining was a thing.

B) Seriously, the ego. LOL. Who even was I.

C) I missed that early chance to stretch myself and see if outlining might actually make me a better writer. (Spoiler: quite probably. Note to self: DON’T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE TWICE.)

D) Standardized tests are completely ridiculous.