I print this out and give it to my students every semester:
“It was a basic tenet of [Gardner’s] that a writer found what he wanted to say in the ongoing process of seeing what he’d said. And this seeing, or seeing more clearly, came about through revision. He believed in revision, endless revision; it was something very close to his heart and something he felt was vital for writers, at whatever stage of their development.” —Raymond Carver, from his foreword to John Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist.
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4 comments:
Spot on.
Yes, but does there come a point where you can revise a story to death? I love doing rewrites and finding out what the story is all about, but sometimes I feel like it loses some of the magic of that first draft.
I'm not against revisions, just wondering how you know when to stop, how you know that you've gotten the story right.
True, but you notice he didn't say anything about how much of a pain in the ass it is.
Yeah, there's a certain magical feel to your first draft because you're high on the creative process, but every first draft is full of stinky stuff that needs reworking. Revision is your creative self working alongside your critical self. Even then, you miss things. I still tinker with poems and stories of mine that have already been published. You have to trust yourself.
It can be a pain in the ass. After four drafts of BITTER WATER BLUES, I've had enough. That doesn't mean the job is done, though. Any editor who takes on the book (assuming Hell freezes over and it gets published) is going to send me back for more revision. However, the novel has gotten better with each rewrite.
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