Episode 11 - The Magic of Revision

The revision process. It's a thing of beauty, but also agony, if we don't know how to approach this multifaceted task in a palatable and productive manner. In this episode our hosts offer insights into how to overcome the overwhelm of revision, draft by draft by draft...

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

An author, a psychotherapist, and an entrepreneur walked into a bar. What came out is Dead Frog in the Driveway, a podcast that celebrates our potential as creative beings. No matter who you are, no matter what you might believe, no matter what you've been told. If you've ever wrestled with a blank page, a stuck idea, or a shifting sense of purpose, we hope you'll find some company and maybe some inspiration from this podcast. Our show is co-hosted by author and teacher Joni B. Cole, therapist and writer Pat Williams, and me, Drew Rockwell, a writer and business entrepreneur who still believes my dead frog in the driveway story deserved a much better grade. But it's time to move on and get started with today's episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Hello, Drew. Pat? Joni. So guess what? Today's topic is huge.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

They're always huge.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Yeah, but this one is huger than huge. It's one of my favorite topics. But rumor has it that Pat doesn't like this topic. I just learned this seconds ago. So the topic we want to talk about today, which really is big for writers, is revision. So I was gonna ask you both, but maybe Pat can sound in first. When you hear that word revision, as writers, as writers who have completed novels, what's your first gut instinct when you hear that word revision? So Pat.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Nothing like being put on the spot. Um, well, I'm revising now, as Drew pointed out. At first, yeah, my reaction was eh. But the more I thought about it, and so my first thought now is wow, it's a huge topic. It really is a huge topic. I mean, I have to say it's a little bit of agony to be honest, in terms of my experience with this in some ways, but there's also amazing deep revelations and also, you know, thoughts about it. You know, I have lots of thoughts about it. About revision, and not just in the writing process as a topic, which is really fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Yeah, that is.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

What about you, Drew? What's your gut instinct?

SPEAKER_02 2:25

I mean, the first word that pops I like the word deep or deepening. You know, for me in the writing process, I feel like I start to sink into the story and I find a different depth to it than I find in the initial drafting phase. And sometimes that means whole chunks leave. I follow my nose in in different ways or what's interesting in different ways. Sometimes it gets stimulated by feedback. But the word that comes to mind is deepening for me in the revision process.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Yeah. I think revision is so exciting because it's everything, it's opportunity, it's magic, it's deepening, it's how we layer, it's salvation because you know something has to save my first, second, third drafts. So I think it is really exciting. I get a great feeling vibe when I hear the word revision. But I also really understand that it's this big amorphous, what? Because we know we're not where we want to be, and how do we get there? And it is huge. It is where I'd say we spend 90% of our time as writers with integrity. So no wonder it feels like, ugh. So I once heard this metaphor and it really makes sense. Revision mountain. It feels like we have to climb a mountain to revise. But there's lots of ways to achieve that. But unless we break it down, it really can just be this discouraging, amorphous, I don't know what to do. So I think it's all this opportunity, it is where the magic, I really feel like it's where the magic, where the muses come and settle on your shoulder during the revision process. But how do we revise in a way that's not overwhelming and that it's productive? So any tips on that, you guys?

SPEAKER_02 4:16

I mean, breaking it down is such a good way of thinking about it. I mean, you know, sometimes you just take different passes at it. A pass I often take is is it in service of the story? So I look at things that I've written and I say, that's really good writing. But it's not really necessary. It's not serving the story. And so I remove it and then I start seeing the things that are in service of the story. So revision is a process, it's not an event. It goes on and on. And in some sense, the thing I struggle with is when to stop. But um it's a process, and there are just I I like the idea of breaking it down into parts and doing different types of revision depending on where you are at any moment of time.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Right, right. There's so many categories of revision. But Pat, how do you tackle revision? Or at least at first blush, how do you tackle revision? Just do what I say in the workshop. Just do that next.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

You know, I have to be honest, I'm not sure how to answer that. I guess my first answer might be, what did I miss?

SPEAKER_00 5:27

I like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

And that leads me to figuring out what maybe what that is.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

I never thought of it that way. What did I miss? It makes sense. I mean, ultimately that's what you have to cover when you revise. Yeah. Missed opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Well, also, maybe in myself. You know.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

So I think you reflect what a lot of listeners might be thinking in terms of I I don't know how I revise. I don't know what order. I just sort of might do it helter skelter and get there eventually. But I do think it helps sometimes to think of revision, not the way a lot of people think of revision, as a matter of drafts. I revised 40 times, which would be low bar for me, probably. But think of it in terms more of issues. And I think that really helps. At some point, the issues get all mixed and muddled, and it doesn't matter because you're on fire. But particularly when you're first going back in that room, as Patricia Hampel says in the revision process. Now go back in and see what you've got. There are ways to break it down that kind of make a semblance of order. You don't have to revise in any order. But for example, one of the first issues when you've got some material to work with, because the first draft should be nothing but openness and appreciation. But when you do have something to work with, there's some earlier issues that can really help you to approach the revision process. For example, point of view is an early issue. Now, if you're not ready to look at that, then screw point of view. But that is an issue that affects every word. So that might be forget about line editing, forget about the order, forget about should this be a scene when you summarized, forget about the big things like plotting and characterization, which kind of don't mean much until you kind of delve into that scene. What about point of view? Or what about framing? Sometimes that's an issue to really settle in on early on. What about looking at where you told something and maybe you should amplify it in a scene or make it more scenic? So those are say the the big three that maybe, and only one, take only one, you could begin to look at just those things from the first draft to the second draft, or more realistically, from the third draft to the fourth draft. But instead of, I gotta fix this. What about look at this issue? What about look at that issue? What about look at that issue? And that really distills it down. And the beautiful thing about revision is from the beginning to the end, when you take care of one thing, it usually sweeps up a lot of other problems along the way. But really distilling it down to one issue at a time can get rid of that sense of overwhelm, I've found.

SPEAKER_02 8:09

I like the telling thing that you just said too. I mean, is as a good opportunity and it kind of links to something that Pat said before, which I kind of want to go back to about, you know, what did I miss? Sometimes when you're telling something, what you're really doing is distancing yourself from the character. And it's fine in the beginning because you can kind of see this is what I want it to feel like, but I'm describing it. And so you go into it and you now show it in the character, and that just opens up, it gets you closer to the character, the things you are missing in some sense. So to me, that's why I use the word deepening. You know, telling's like this clue in the revision process, like, oh, there's something here that I want to get across. I'm just being lazy. So when I come back to it and now say, how am I going to show this? I feel like I'm getting closer to the character and closer to the truth and closer to the thing that I'm missing, to that's word. Um so I like that, you know, and there are clues in everybody's writing where you're telling stuff. You know, there's clues all the time in early drafts, and they they can be little goal mines for you in life too.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

You know, I'm making some notes listening to you both. I mean, two things. One is it's a process of discovery in a way. You know, it's interesting uh in terms of images, right? Because you were saying something, Joni, just a few minutes ago about mountain climbing a mountain. And my image is just the opposite. It's like going into a cave of going deeper somehow. I don't know what that says about me, that I right away think about going into a cave, but okay. Um instead of climbing a mountain. But you know, that that there's a deepening somehow, a recognition. I mean, I was just thinking about uh well, two things actually conversation that Drew and I had about the arc of one of my characters' story, actually the main character. And, you know, he asked a question about does she know something at a certain point, but really at the end of the book? And just that question has now thank you, Drew, has sent me off into recognizing that the answer is no, she really doesn't. But I think she needs to, right? To serve the whole story. So now I'm in the process of thinking, I haven't even done it yet in terms of well, actually that's not true, you know, in terms of how do I revise one particular chapter, which you both are aware of, but then how do I revisit that later on in the story? You know, I mean I was just thinking about so what does that change? Like what what makes that more true? That revision. How do I know that that makes it more true? Because that's what I've been thinking about as thinking about this topic is like what is it that you recognize in yourself that makes it clearer that this is more true when you're revising something. I don't know if that makes any sense.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

It makes complete sense to me, though. That's why the metaphor of a mountain or a cave works just as well for me, is so apt, because I don't know until I get there. How do I get there? I know something feels true when I've revised it a million times, and yep, that's it. Yep. That's now recreating the emotional impact of that experience I want to communicate or whatever. And that's the feeling we want. The path, oh, this is right, but how do we get there? And you know, to Drew's point, one of the first ways is to look at those emotional hotspots, I think you were referring to them too, in your manuscript that you're probably still telling, and you start flipping them into scenic moments.

SPEAKER_03 12:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

And then with each revision of that scenic moment, you get the detail right or the action right or the dialogue right. Our natural impulse is to first tell ourselves a story.

SPEAKER_03 12:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

So we're gonna be telling. We're gonna use a lot of exposition, but what about those emotional hotspots where she asks for a divorce or he quits his job, or those, you know, these obvious, or they can be quite emotional hot spots. The first bit of revision can be to flip them to scenic moments, and then we can begin that discovery of deeper and deeper. Why did she do that? Did she know before? So I think looking for those hotspots is a beautiful way to take that fabric of a first or second draft and then begin to shift it into scenic moments.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

The key is though, we can say all this about revision, and revision becomes a very, especially if you break it down, doable and and I hope joyful process, because to go deeper is so rewarding and joyful. But we can only really do that if we know craft. I can say swap that telling for showing, but if you don't know craft, what does that mean? So no wonder it's revision mountain again. But how do I make it more scenic? So craft is really important in understanding and harnessing and wrangling the revision process. But um, but yeah, the payoff is huge because we go deeper, more meaningful. It's rewarding to us. Obviously, it will be rewarding to our readers.

SPEAKER_02 13:38

Yeah, you know, I'm rattling around thinking about work again or the business world, and I'm thinking about building products or building dashboards or data analytic tools and things like that. And the language is different, but the process is sort of similar in a way. You know, there's this prototype process, which is probably a lot like drafting, where you're beginning to toy around with the data, you're beginning to build views of it, you don't know whether it's really interesting or not. Um, you don't know if there's anything there or not. You're sort of exploring. And then you find things that are interesting, or you share them with potential clients, and they say, well, that isn't interesting, but that's is actually interesting over there. And then there's this revision process or really product development process where you really go much deeper, take it out of simple tooling into more industrial, scalable kinds of tooling. But it's very similar. You're playing with an idea in the beginning, and now you're finding those little spots that are interesting or potentially interesting, and then you're going deeper. And I I feel I feel like revision is is that. I mean, it's it's finding those spots and digging in.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: There's also clues. You can look anytime you tell an emotion, for example, in writing, or I'm sure in business or in other realms, you know an emotional spot. But you know, a lot of times it's just she felt sad.

unknown 15:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

He was angry. Well, right there, make it a scene. Those little swap-ins are your first clue right there. You want to show the emotional hotspots. That could be two lines of dialogue, yeah. Or it could be four pages of a scene. But that that swap in really gets not only does it make your writing better, but it gets you excited about your story more. Because when you're just telling a story, it can feel a little, and this happened, and then this happened. And then when you are showing a story by swapping in those emotional hotspot scenic moments, now you're feeling it again. You're reliving it. So it's it's a very rewarding process. Sometimes. Well, yeah, because it can be hard to enter the process and it can easily be overwhelmable.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

That's sort of where my brain goes, you know, when we first suggested this. So I started thinking about the word. What does the word actually mean? Where does it come from, you know? So it's a re-seeing. And then of course I started to think about it through the lens of my work. How does that show up, right? When we revise a version of ourselves, or we revise a story that we think we knew. Right? A version of a story. What is that process like? What happens in that process?

SPEAKER_00 16:25

That sounds harder to me than revising on the page. But I think they're connected. Oh, oh my gosh, absolutely. I really do. You know.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

Yeah, that's such a good comment.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Well, Grace Paley has this great quote. It's related to writing, but I think it relates more applicably even to what you're saying, Pat, is every draft gets you closer to the truth. So as we're revising ourselves, and this is now your realm, so I don't want to overspeak, but that's what I feel like. When I have to work on myself, when I have the courage to work on myself, I'm getting closer to the truth. But that certainly applies in writing, I think. The characters feel more authentic.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

But I think the truth in some ways, even in whatever example we're using, it's subjective, actually. Right? But maybe not in Drew, in your example. That it's not ex it's not really subjective, actually. If something works or it doesn't, right?

SPEAKER_03 17:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

But I go back to that. Actually, I was listening to our first or second podcast today, and about the whole idea of the yes, you know, the click of recognition on the inside.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Well, I think that feeling, that yes, is exactly what we experience when we have revised and it is where it needs to be. Right. I didn't really think we should talk about this too early, but I want to make sure we get to this topic under the guise of a revision or under the umbrella of revision is I hear it a lot, but if I revise, I'm gonna mess up my story, or I'm gonna revise it and then I'm gonna make it worse, you know, and or I can't stop revising. But I really feel like when you get that feeling, yes, this is right, I feel this, you're done. And I have seen people overwork stories, but when that happens, that's still not an excuse to not want to revise. Not wanting to revise is now there's where laziness comes in. But I do think you're not really in that much danger of overworking a story because we know we can feel it when it feels right. If we end up overworking it, I think we can recognize even in ourselves, we're procrastinating now. We're just reworking it because we don't want to move on to the next thing. But I think all of us have that feeling in us. This is good. This is done. So you pay attention when you feel like, oh, I'll never be done, or you're making like just changes for the sake of changes. Is that procrastination, or are you really doing this in service to the story?

SPEAKER_02 18:54

Aaron Powell I was thinking about when you were saying that. What is the mental quality or state of mind that you bring to the revision process? And for me, I think about kind of wonder. It's sort of like, well, I I wonder what would happen here, or I wonder I wonder if this was done a little bit differently, or I wonder if I pushed on that, what would what would really happen. You know, it's a little bit of um Yeah, it's it's a little bit of um openness to what's on the page in front of you or the situation in front of you. And yeah, it's it's it's w it's wonder. And then you sit with that wonder a little bit in the process and you follow it. And um sometimes you're going in dead ends and sometimes they're non-productive. But I I think that if you bring that quality to the revision process, no matter where you start and when you decide to stop, you're gonna find really deeper interesting getting people closer to the story, closer to the character, closer to what's essentially true.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Absolutely. I think another challenge of revision is sometimes we feel like there's an order of how we have to do it, which means we have to know something that we don't know yet. For example, ultimately in every single scene in a novel, for example, there needs to be a purpose that moves that story up the narrative arc. But very often in your first many drafts, you don't know what that purpose is. And so that's another reason I think revision really can feel intimidating. We think we have to know something we don't know. And one of the things that just helps me the most in revision is you can't know what you don't know. So move on. Or I can really be determined to work on this essay or this scene. And I do know I could make that sentence better. So do that. We can say that should fall at the back end of revision, but not if that's the only thing I know. So if you don't know something, don't worry about that. But you know how to make a telling moment a scenic moment, and you know that should be a scenic moment, so do that. And you know this would be a better beginning than the where you actually started, so do that. And with each bit of forward momentum, you begin to know more and more, including then the ultimate, what was the point of this scene or essay or chapter.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Aaron Powell I was listening to this George Saunders thing where he was talking about revision, and he was talking also about taking the reader on a roller coaster ride afterwards. I think he was basically saying his process is like 80% revision. I mean, he he lives in the revision process, which I really resonate with. But also, you know, in terms of finding the story, just kind of pushing things a little bit to the extreme, which sometimes you can see better when, you know, you can always pull back. I was writing a scene the the other day in a cemetery, and I decided that these people were going to be hiding in the bushes in the cemetery. And I was just pushing it to see if there was something interesting about these people in the bushes in the cemetery, as opposed to just sitting there watching other people. And so I do think sometimes another thing about revision is just try to push yourself to the edges a little bit, not that you have to stay there, but because you might see things more clearly at the at the edges. And then you can decide, wait, do I really want them to be in the bushes or not? Or, you know, is that really necessary? But by putting them in the bushes, a whole other thing opened up. Like, what were they really doing in the bushes? And why would, you know, 60-year-old people be hiding in a bush? Which then, you know, there's a lot you can think about with that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

The discovery process, I think, is is almost as big in the revision part of writing than in the first draft part. But there's so many mythologies about how we write. We write and then we rewrite. Like it's a two-step process. Right there, that makes revision intimidating because we think, uh oh, we're in step two, we got to fix everything. But the whole creative process is one of discovery. I think I get the most inspired ideas, not in the first drafts, but as you were saying, in that what if, that revision, that openness process. So yeah, I think that's another framework we should approach revision with is that it is a discovery process. It is not just fixing things that are broken. It's we've already talked about it's going deeper, it's layering, it's what-ifing, but it's just totally a what if or a pushing process too, which I think can be so fun.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Okay, so not to be a wet blanket. But I'm thinking about somebody listening to this. And maybe even me if if I was sort of didn't know if I you know, if I was 30 years younger than I am now. And I would be so appreciative of what especially you the two have been talking about, especially Joni, you know, explaining it and talking about it from that perspective and discovery and all that stuff. But I'm thinking about sitting there thinking, um, yeah, I get that. But what is it that stops me from doing that? You know, like what is it that makes it hard for me to want to discover, to be curious, to try this, you know, listening to you, Drew, about trying this in the bushes, that you know, I might be listening to that and thinking, I wish I could do that. I wish I could think like that, but I don't. You know, I have trouble imagining things sometimes, or you know, sometimes I feel like I don't know how to do that. Right. So I'm thinking about like, okay, so what does stop a person? What what's us? Never mind a person. Yeah. What does stop us? I mean, the whole thing obviously about the revision process, about why people, you know, you were talking about procrastination, etc. And I'm thinking about it from his perspective of loss. What else is now? And it's the same thing in terms of if I'm, you know, trying to have a different narrative about my life or how I see myself, before I can do that, I do have to sort of let go of a version of myself. And there's certain loss in that. It's exciting, it's can be joyful, it can be, you know, like reaching the top of a mountain. But there's something also sort of scary about that, about letting something go that was true at one time and is no longer true. That's not easy to do that. I don't know. Am I making any sense at all?

SPEAKER_02 25:55

No, you're making a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

I think your question of why so much resistance is such a a good one. Because we're all seasoned writers. I'm a seasoned writer and a seasoned workshop instructor, and I love the revision process. And every time I sit down, particularly from an early draft to then the first blush of revision, I have that resistance. So I get it completely. I think though there's ways to break it down. One is, you know, it's just an overwhelm. So one way to break it down really is it's an issue by issue by issue. It's not fix it all at once. The other, I think, is just things we have to do if we are going to be writers of integrity, which is, for example, get feedback. Because, for example, in this conversation, Drew apparently asked Pat a question when they were going behind my back about Pat's story or whatever, and it opened it wide up. But would she already know that? That is beautiful inspiration for how to revise that character. So feedback, and of course, me on my, you know, broken record thing, craft. The more we understand craft, and this is not some esoteric thing, you can get craft from books, you can get craft from workshops, you can acquire craft as an autodidact, you can get crafts from programs, you don't have to spend a billion dollars on. But without craft, revision will always be a big black hole or a cave or a roller coaster actually makes it sound good, you know, versus a mountain or whatever. But that understanding, break it down into issues, that understanding you need craft so you know how to write forward productively, the use of feedback to really direct yourself, to allow you to hone your own editorial instincts. These are real want them or not want them, this is how you're going to be able to revise with a very forward-moving momentum and with joy. And you cannot do it in a vacuum.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

So that makes a lot of sense. It really does.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

And also, fear and faith will be a big part of the revision process. So the more we accept that, too, the fear that you articulated absolutely will always be there, but just make it a natural part of the revision process. And it is, it's not like you're not going to be fearful. And then George Saunders says, put your faith in revision. Write any old thing in the confidence that you can whip it into shape by rewriting it. Faith is a huge part of the revision process, but it's intangible, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 28:24

Given what you're talking about, the mountain image is actually more effective because you can see it. It's way up there. And it's uphill. It is uphill, but it is you can see it. Whereas in a cave, you really can't. Right? I mean your light only goes so far.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

I think they're both apt metaphors. Whichever one resonates. But either way, you can spelunk that cave or you can climb that mountain, but not if you look at it as just this vast dark or steep.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Well, like you said, you have to have knowledge how to be in a cave or how to climb a mountain.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

And like you said, I think, and that's such great advice in life too. I was you were saying that I was thinking about times of change in my life and where everything felt a little overwhelming, and sometimes I might have felt frozen, and then I thought, how did I navigate that time? Because it's if it's a life changer, if it's a you're revising a chapter, and I remember, you know, I distinctly remember breaking it down. If it's all this one big ball, you just get frozen by it. Anyone, anyone of us would, you know. If you break it into component parts and start to get some fluidity and you wonder about this and you get a little bit of movement, then the next thing happens, and the next thing. And then faith is a big part of it, too, because you're actually faith in the process of breakdown, feedback, craft, faith that if you go on that journey, you're gonna come out the other side.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, and that something that you thought was true is no longer true in the same way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

Well, I think that's why my life's work. The last thing I want to say in terms of my profession in the writing realm is I want everyone to feel the joy of revision. Because to go deeper, to discover that truth, to make something more vivid and expertial for a reader, that's what revision does. And it's as rewarding for the writer to achieve that as it is for the reader. Any last thoughts?

SPEAKER_01 30:36

I really like that way.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_00 30:39

All right, everyone, revise on.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

See you next time.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Just to say I don't go behind your back.

SPEAKER_02 30:51

Listeners, thanks for tuning in to Dead Frog in the Driveway with Pat Williams, Joni Cole, and myself, Drew Rockwell. We hope you join us for more stories and conversation that explore our creative intelligence and how we can all expand our thinking, ideas, and imagination. Plus, if you'd like a heads up about future episodes, make sure to subscribe to Dead Frog in the Driveway wherever you listen to podcasts. Go figure. Subscribe to Dead Frog in the Driveway.