Revision

Embarrassing admission: when I first started writing a novel, I thought it would be easy. I thought you could bash something out and be done with it. Turns out that isn’t the case.

In 2022, I wrote a first draft. Now I’m about two-thirds of the way through a subsequent draft (I’m not quite sure what number it is). I’ve changed direction a couple of times and these days I feel like I’m getting close to something that resembles a novel.

In her essay, Shitty First Drafts, Anne Lamott writes of such drafts:

All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts.

From the essay, I learned that the prevailing wisdom is not to share your shitty first draft with anyone else. Which means that, in 2022, I was quite the fool. I extend my enormous thanks to the people who read my shitty first draft and, despite its awfulness, encouraged me to continue. You are the best.

I also received some harsh criticism at that time and now, when I look back on it, I see how right that critique was. Of course, when I first received it, it hurt like hell and I confess that it stalled me for many months, making me doubt my ability.

I’ve learned so much between then and now. And the main thing I’ve come to understand is that the writing process isn’t just a showcase of natural ability. It’s a craft. A craft that takes practice and the development of skill.

A while ago, a friend of mine* shared a saying about building houses: build the first one for your enemy, the second one for your friend and the third one for yourself. So, like the first house, the first draft of a novel may not go so well. But you’ll learn along the way.

And the best way to get better is to revise. And revise.  

I read an interview with Kate Grenville recently and she said she revises everything twenty-five times. Yep, twenty-five. So, even if I’m on revision three, maybe four, maybe five, I’ve still got a long way to go.

The following quote is attributed to Ernest Hemingway:

Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote the first part of A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over. The first draft of anything is shit. When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself.

Apparently, in the contemporary publishing world, if you are lucky enough to have your manuscript accepted by an agent, you may need to work through several rounds of editing with them. Then, if it’s taken up by a publisher, you need to revise it again. And probably again.

At what point do you get entirely sick of it? At what point do you throw in the towel and go eat an ice cream instead?

I think the novelist must possess a powerful desire to attain mastery of the craft and that this is a reason to persist.

For me, my desire to persist with writing also lies in reading. When I am pulled into a book, when the outside world is swept away and I can swim freely in the depths of the author’s imagination – this inspires me to keep trying.

For me, the best reading happens when I forget that the author is even there. Great craft renders the author invisible. It hands the experience over to the reader like a gift.

I do wonder if there is any author, alive or dead, who hasn’t loved the reading experience so much that they wanted to create it for someone else? This is a another wonderful reason to persist.

Here’s a beautiful quote by Anais Nin:

We write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth.

How sweet, to taste life twice. Yet it seems that with the amount of revision required to write a novel, you may end up tasting it twenty-five times.

Happy reading dear friends, happy writing if that’s calling to you. And happy revising if that’s where you’re at.

*Thanks Andreas! :D