Writing, Writing, and Re-Writing (Or "Why I Have Learned the Importance of Revision")

"Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain."

- Elie Wiesel

I really admire that quote above, because I feel like it does sum up the process of writing so well. And I will admit - editing my own work is not one of my strongest suits. Today, I'm going to choose to discuss revisions, and why I have learned the importance of writing and re-writing your work in order to make it the best that it can possibly be.

When I first started writing poems and short stories, I was in seventh grade. I grew up in a small, rural town in Pennsylvania where we were required to take classes every year like Home Economics, Woodshop, and Keyboard (don't ask me why, because to this day I still do not know). In seventh grade, we were required to take both an English class and a Writing class. Writing was taught by this older, dark-haired and bespectacled woman named Miss DeNicoula. It was in that class that I learned how to appreciate writing, and - even more than that - fall in love with stories.

Looking back on the things that I wrote in sixth and seventh grade, it's no surprise that I find them to be...crap. I'll give myself credit for being creative, to an extent, but was I brilliant?  No. It's amazing though that I think of myself at the current time any differently. Who's to say that I won't look back on my writing ten years from now and think "Wow, this stuff is terrible"? That is why I've decided to implement a kind of rolling revision process.

Before I explain my process to you, I'll explain why I find revision so difficult. In our Advanced Poetry workshop my senior year of college, the ten or so of us in the class discussed what we find to be the most difficult thing about writing poetry. And most of us - unsurprisingly - said that revising poems was the most difficult feat. My reasoning was pretty much the same as my classmates' - when someone asks you to remove or add to your poem, you almost feel attacked, in a way. A poem is usually something quite personal, and we - as poets - like to feel that everything we write is sacred. If we come up with a phrase that we think is particularly brilliant, we pride ourselves in it. And the worst part is that we think that our words are so sacred that no one else should be able to touch them.

I think poetry is the most difficult thing to revise because it is so intimate and because it's (often) so short. In Advanced Fiction workshops, I had less difficulty revising when my peers or professor told me to develop a character more, or cut a certain scene. Though I was deeply attached to those words and phrases, it just felt less...personal, perhaps, than revising poetry does. And maybe the problem is similar to how we view rejection: walls are constructed. We get defensive when people constructively criticize our work, because we think that their comments and suggestions are some personal attack against us.

And yes, there are definitely exceptions to this case: I will not take every piece of advice that professors or peers give to me, namely because some of them are contradictory. One student may tell me that they love a line, while another may tell me to remove it. Obviously, when it comes down to it, revision is in the hands of the writer. You can tell yourself that you have a brilliant piece of work, and that it is perfect. But if it is getting constantly rejected every time you submit, chances are that you need to revise it. Revision is a healthy part of life. My Advanced Poetry workshop professor took years revising some of his poems until they were as good as they could be. And while I can honestly say that I have not taken years to revise one poem, I have taken the time to let the piece ferment, to distance myself from it so that I can look back on it from a clearer perspective.

So what exactly have been my struggles with revision? Personally, I find it easy to revise the work of others, as I am sure most of us would readily agree to. It's easy to read another person's poem and to be constructive with feedback. It's especially easy with strangers in workshops (like online workshops I have taken in the past where you never actually meet the person whose work you are commenting on), but I've found to be a bit more difficult in friends, and perhaps that's because I revert back to taking offense at everything that a friend may find "wrong" with my work. Or perhaps it is just because I like dishing criticism, but not taking it. Either way, that is definitely something that I struggle with.

So what is the actual purpose of revision? Why is it necessary? If a poem "sounds" right the first time that you write it, shouldn't it just stay that way? Here's where I'm in the process of learning - I'm beginning to realize that not everything I do is sacred. Not every word in my poem is sent from God to the ears of mortals. There are things in poems that I have sitting in my portfolio right now that could be better. We, as writers, need to realize that in order to be successful, we must be constantly evolving and growing. If you're stubborn and egotistical (which most of us are), your work will remain the stagnant. Notice that I didn't say "timeless"?

We, as writers, are attached to our work. It becomes an extension of us, somehow - like a child that we nurture. And, just like children, our work changes and grows. The words themselves will remain stale if we choose to not let them breathe, to refuse to edit because we want to keep things the way that they are. The trait of a mature writer is their ability to cut a paragraph or a phrase that they held so close to them in order to make sure that the overall work itself is the best it can possibly be.

And I'm not quite there, but - just like a lot of things in life - editing is all about baby steps.