revision: trust your instincts?

Revision is a hot topic for writers. For some, it's a dreaded process. For others, it's "easy" because all they do is change a paragraph here or there and take out some adverbs. For me, back in the day, revision generally consisted of adding two or three pages and fine-tuning things. Granted, that got me A's in undergraduate workshops, but I don't think I ever actively learned what revision was.

My opinions on revision have changed recently. For the workshop in which I was enrolled last semester, I did some massive revisions of my two short stories at the end of the semester. Revisions that took the stories by their shoulders and shoved them in a "good" direction. Each story (which originally clocked in at 4300 and 3000 words, respectively) came away with at most four pages of the original draft. In their current drafts, they are now 5200 and 3600 words.

I was googling recently and typed in the words "writing, revision, published" (I think...). One of the first websites that popped up was a blog (Wanna Be Published?) that featured an article written by Cec Murphy. I went to his website and learned that his passion is to stimulate people's minds and nourish their souls. That blog seemed to be along the same lines. Fair enough. In any case, this was the advice: "Trust your instincts." But how sound is that advice?

Let's think about this. If I were to trust my original instincts--which is the nature of instincts--I wouldn't change a thing. Everything I wrote down the first time is golden, and I can leave it that way. If people don't publish it, that's their problem. Such is the attitude of many undergraduate/novice/lame writers. (By the way, those adjectives are mutually exclusive.)

Solid revision comes from experience. I can't really say that it stems from anywhere else. I've been actively writing for three plus years as a creative writing student, and I just now started getting the swing of revision. I'm finally pleased with my revision process. Here's how it goes:

1)I leave the damn thing alone after I write it.
2)I go back, and I take no prisoners.
3)I try to focus on the creative elements at the heart of the story. If the story thrives on tension, I try to stay in the narrative moment. If the story is heavy on characters, I work on keeping them true to themselves and on their interaction. If it's mostly internal, I try to get out of my own head and into someone else's.

Like I said, I've based this on experience. I chose the creative writing major because I couldn't stand the idea of being actively involved with "the masses" for the rest of my life. Obviously, my part-time job at JoAnn Fabrics was tainting my soul, and my choice of major was the result. Writing is such a social process, and I feel for the writers who don't have a group to work with. I'm at the point in grad school where, while I still love working with a select group of fellow writers (a post all to themselves to come later) and I still crave their advice, I know what's wrong with my stories. For the most part. I don't need a workshop to tell me where the character lost her personality, or where the tension disappeared, or where the dialogue was stilted. I know. But I still need my small group of writers whose opinions I trust to give me feedback on the revisions I make. Because, guess what, there is such a thing as a bad revision.

In class we are told to "murder our darlings." It's a difficult piece of advice to swallow. But when you become involved in revision, and accept that it's not meant to torture you but rather it's meant to enrich your writing, it becomes easier. You understand that a better sentence will come from the one you deleted.

welcome.

Hi.

I started a blog a year ago in hopes of documenting my time in grad school. Turns out I was more interested in writing about music, celebrities and books than my classes and my writing. So, I've decided to start another space for this type of discussion.

I think the sending-work-to-literary-journals bit is interesting, and I enjoy hearing about other people's experience. Maybe my anecdotes can help other people, or at least make them feel like they're not the only ones getting rejected. Maybe if I write about it I can be held a little more accountable to actually send things out. Wouldn't that be nice.

Here's what I hope to post here: successes (yes, let's hope for success and achievement of all kind), struggles, excerpts of my work, and other writer-ly things.

In any case, I hope you like the ride.