Dear Journal, time for a Home-Made Revision Workshop post!

My NaBlo posts are in the form of letters to my journal about my revision process. Along the way, I'll include Home-Made Revision Workshop posts, and my Friday Challenges.


Dear Journal,
I think it is time for another Home-Made Revision Workshop post! This has been the lost week for me, but I'm feeling pretty good - so I'll dip into my main resource - The Artful Edit - by Susan Bell - and see what happens. I think I'll just go serendipity wise - every bit of it is jammed to the gunnels -

(The outer edge of the deck where it meets the gunwale (pronounced "gunnel") at the top of the topside. The rail sometimes is raised to stop waves and provide a toerail. this expression means as full of a boat full of fish could be! )

with pithy instruction - so we'll just let the fates direct us on this cool lovely October day. I'm going to a random number program - be back in a jiffy.

The earliest technical usage for jiffy was defined by Gilbert Newton Lewis (1875–1946). He proposed a unit of time called the "jiffy" which was equal to the time it takes light to travel one centimetre (approximately 33.3564 picoseconds).^[2] It has since been redefined for different measurements depending on the field of study.^[3]

Who knew that's what 'jiffy' meant?  I just thought it was an expression of the fifties invented by suburban mothers. Well I did!

I went here - http://www.random.org/ and put in the range and got the number 192. Now I'm opening the book - the suspense is unbelievable, isn't it?!

The topic on 192 starts on 191 and it is about editors as censors and usurpers. this is in a chapter on the history of editing which is bloody fascinating and which everyone should read. On page 192, Bell discusses how Emily Dickinson ran into an editor's squeamishness. Bell says:

Her poem "I taste a liquor never brewed" was first printed in 1861 in the Springfield Daily Republican. In that paper, the first stanza read:

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not Frankfort berries yield the sense
Such a delirious whirl.

Bell goes on to tell us that the poem wasn't written that way. Her stanza more brazen and forthright. Here it is:

I taste a liquor never brewed---
From Tankards scooped in Pearl ---
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!

The editor turned to common punctuation instead of Dickinson's wonderful dashes (sorry Blogger won't let me), added some words, a rhyme (pearl/whirl) and made it all too ladylike.
Dickinson's response? "...how one can publish and at the same time preserve the integrity of one's art?"

After a bit more discussion involving Hemingway and his editor Max Perkins, Bell states "It is bad enough for an editor to prune provocative phrases or ideas from a writer's work out of fear they will offend; when writers do this to themselves, one might wonder why they write at all."

And that is the pith that I want to run with in today's revision workshop. How do we stop ourselves from our own censoring while revising. It is the edge of the sword blade - on one side the fear of being overly precious with our writing and on the other, our desire to be liked and accepted getting in the way of our truth.

I can't tell you the freedom I've felt, co-existing with great sorrow, at my father not being able to read my writing any more. I know that sounds harsh, but he was such a huge influence and some of it not so good - I never wanted to fret him, and frankly, some of my real honest to the bone writing would fret him. I find myself elevating others into that inner censor and I must work hard to rout them out and write what is true for me. I'm not talking about revealing family secrets or anything like that - just that my style might be offensive to a dad raised in a different time. And I fully own that it might not even be remotely true - as I'm sure he censored his tastes from his children as much as we to him. It is that inner Dad I must deal with and it is somewhat easier now that I know he can't read over my shoulder. (and if he can, I don't want to know about it!)

So, for those of you in the revision process - have a look at what you hold back on and why. I'm not asking you to change from a style that suits you to one that doesn't because it is edgier etc... I'm merely asking you, within the context of the work itself, are there things you are self-censoring? I will be asking myself that over the next while.

Later lovelies! Only two more posts in this series - it has been good for me, hope it has for you.

And here is a photo from my contemplative practice - this week's assignment - texture.

Home-Made Revision Workshop - Clarity - pitfalls and peaks

My NaBlo posts are in the form of letters to my journal about my revision process. Along the way, I'll include Home-Made Revision Workshop posts, and my Friday Challenges.




Dear Journal,
It is a Monday and you know what that means? You don't? Me neither, except I always have the faintest whiff of 'new day, clean notebook' on a Monday. After all, it is when we start diets, new jobs, the school week and so forth. I realized, after reading my little sticky note at the top of all my NaBlo posts, that I intended to continue the Home-Made Revision Workshop series. It is kind of hard to tell, since all these letters to you, dear journal, are about my revision process, but the idea was to go to other sources - especially the amazing book, The Artful Edit, by Susan Bell. So here goes.


Today's workshop topic is clarity. We all, as writers, know how important clarity is, but many of us have a stunningly different idea of what it means. Here is what the Oxford Dictionary has to say:

• the quality of being clear, in particular:.
• the quality of being coherent and intelligible:for the sake of clarity, each of these strategies is dealt with separately
• the quality of being easy to see or hear; sharpness of image or sound:the clarity of the picture
• the quality of being certain or definite:it was clarity of purpose that he needed
• the quality of transparency or purity:the crystal clarity of water

Origin:

Middle English (in the sense ‘glory, divine splendour’): from Latin claritas, from clarus'clear'. The current sense dates from the early 17th century

Is that clear? I do like that its origin was 'glory, divine splendour' and isn't that just so? If you use words that are fresh, metaphors that aren't tired, and people understand what it is you mean - how glorious is that?

Here is what Susan Bell quotes on Clarity from Somerset Maugham "[A cause] of obscurity is that the writer is himself not quite sure of his meaning. He has a vague impression of what he wants to say, but has not...exactly formulated it in his mind, and it is natural enough that he should not find a precise expression for a confused idea." 

In other words - if you don't the hell know what you mean do not expect others to, and if they don't, call them dunderheads! (that is a Jan Morrisonism)

I know where my prose is lacking clarity because I get overwhelmingly sleepy when I read it. And it isn't the sleepiness of being bored, although I imagine that is in there, it is the sleepiness that comes from trying to wrestle out a meaning that hasn't been articulated or understood by the originator - even if I'm the originator! It happens to me in therapy sessions too, and when it does, I know the client is spinning themselves a story, so I take it as my cue to stop them and ask them to make their point more clear. 

Revision is where we sweep away anything that doesn't enrich our story. We make our points clear because we've removed the debris or furbelows and lacy bits surrounding those points. If we do clear the non-essentials away and we are still baffled - back to the drawing board.

I started a contemplative photography course last night. I've taken it before, taught by a teacher of this teacher, but I've drifted and want to be brought back to the practice. This is a good way to do it. It is also helpful as cross-training for my writing practice. In contemplative photography - you have the initial flash of perception and you try to form the equivalent. Part of that is to recognize what caught your eye - where the perception begins and ends. That is what we are doing when we are clearing for clarity. If I am walking in the woods and a flash of colour grabs me, my next thought might mess it up - oh, if this leaf is good, so must the green bits around it be, and that weird shaped stick, and so on. I think I do this in my writing. I want to relate my perception on a woman who is being made to understand the real meaning of connection by her crazy circumstances. Along the way, two bachelor recluses show up, and I am entranced by them (and my clever birthing of them!). I need them in the story but I don't need them to be a big deal. I need to cut away all the cleverness and just show how they are part of what woke my protagonist up to the various meanings of family.

Two things are happening when I do this - one is to rid the writing of superfluity, the other is to expand the parts that are essential. Shrink and expand - over and over again - like the diastole/systole of our heart's contractions.

One of the biggest traps for writers on the road to clarity, is the desire to be subtle. We want to be thought of as very clever and that means we sometimes obscure our meanings even from ourselves. I will say no more on this. Just hunt the obscure down and make it clear. You will get when you've gone simple and when you've gone ornate - keep to the middle path.

OK, dear journal, now I must get into my car and go meet with my editor. I am going to discuss some of the paths I wish to take my manuscript down. I find it is very helpful to say these things out loud - to you - to her and to my writing and non-writing pals. Feedback is essential.

Today's picture is clear. I am revising my pow wow chapters and so thought this might be helpful!

Revising - a home-made workshop - Lesson 3 - language

Today, at the home-made workshop, we're going to discuss language. Language is obviously a micro-editing matter. The elements it incorporates are clarity, authenticity, repetitions and so on. But more than the sum of these parts, language is voice. And voice is a learned thing. We need to liberate ourselves from acquired mannerisms, aesthetic habits, and ticks of a lifetime, in order to write freshly and truly. Voice is very personal, of course, and we don't need to kill our own voice - we just need to look at it with a slightly jaundiced eye. For instance, I like repeating words, I like quirky old-fashioned phrases from the forties, I like ending sentences with a preposition. I can use some of these sparingly, but if I make my characters have all the same ticks that I do, well - that isn't voice - that is laziness. If I don't make sure my repetitions aren't some faux finish I put on my words - that do not serve the story - then I'm affected not effective as a writer.
As I revise, I need to hunt out tired clichés - in my mad dash to get the story down, I will have written hundreds of them. That's OK. I don't beat myself up over it - I know that they are holding the place for my thoughtful revision.  I need to pare down my language- not over weigh sentences with too many stunningly gorgeous words. I need to vacuum up all the tiny words that clog my sentences - that, in spite of the fact, in order to, I would argue that - and so on. I might add and so on to the list! I will be hunting the passive and flaccid word choices - the 'ing' words, the 'to be' that slow the reader and rob the phrases of the muscular robustness that I desire.
In this revision, I will look for those words that irritate me, or, conversely, that I'm over proud of. The artificial, pretentious, and gimmicky, must be banished.
Today, those of you who are revising, take a small piece of your work - a page or two - and look for those words, lurking in unedited prose, that need to go - or be changed to tighter and brighter ones.

Revising - a home-made workshop - Lesson 2 - Theme

Revising for theme is a macro-edit but it is odd, in that it will often reveal itself during the micro-editing you do. Theme - what is it? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the leitmotiv is "a recurrent idea or image in a literary work." The leitmotiv, or thematic symbols, will, if used lightly, register with readers and add a richness to your story, beyond the plot and characters. It will give your work its deeper meaning, like incense offerings enriches the religious ceremony.
Let's say you have several leitmotivs in your work. Let's say I do - I do! I have a medicine bag, hawks and the softness or hardness of landscape in the three locations in the novel.  The first two are a bit obvious and I will probably take them down a notch or two as I revise. The last is too subtle and I may try and work it in a bit more throughout the piece. The themes they address are healing, in the case of the medicine bag; wisdom and the freedom it brings, by the hawk presence; and the landscapes reflect the choices Libby has in how she chooses to consider her life.
When we revise, our symbolic patterns become apparent. I think we put them in with some unconsciousness - but we need to polish them and reveal them with finesse. Susan Bell in The Artful Edit, suggests you might highlight them in your text and then see if there are imbalances. She warns "Quantity is not the only issue. Read through your draft to make sure every symbolic image integrates into your text, and does not sit on top as decoration."

Take a piece of writing and have a look at it - see if your leitmotiv shows up subtly or clumsily and what you can do to integrate it smoothly.
And as always - let me know!

Revising - a home-made workshop - Lesson 1 - revising for structure

To all who are in the throes of revising - I am inventing an on-line workshop to commence today. This is how I want to do it - I will post a focus for each session's revision, with examples of how I'm working it with my own material. I'm leading but not teaching - I want to get better at this, as I'm sure you do. I will work  from Susan Bell's book, The Artful Edit, with other material, as it seems worthy. If you want to work along - then by all means join in the conversation by posting your revisions, concerns, enlightenments and support! I envision this as something I will do up to three times a week.
As everything I do, I'm making this up as I go along. Please feel free to let me know what is working for you, or isn't, and anything you can imagine to help us focus and have fun while we revise, rework, self-edit, rewrite. If you want to borrow chunks of this (or all of it) for exploring on your sites - then go for it.
In the same vein of the Friday Challenges, this is self-directed work AND I'd love to hear if you take it on.
By the way - I'm not talking critiques here, I'm talking about looking oneself, with a hard and jaundiced eye, at what we've got on the page. (can an eye be hard? see, I'm starting already)

The movement of the writer between macro and micro revising

Bell suggests that we work best in revising or editing, if we can move between the micro and macro. We will naturally be better at one than the other (or most folks will), and will tend to spend more time on that which we like or do better at. And so, our work may become unbalanced because of it. For instance, if I'm better at the micro skills of language, repetition, clarity, dialogue, etc....then I might have wonderful polished prose without cliché and tedious redundancies. That's all very well, but if there is a singular lack of intention, structure and character, (all macro-view edits) then my piece will fail to do what I want it to.

The dilemma becomes one of skill - how does one move smoothly and beautifully between searching out over-used words and making sure there is a continuity of tone? What I've been doing is backwards and I don't necessarily recommend it, but hey! Here goes. Because I don't exactly plan anything, my draft was fairly raw when it went to the person who's editing for me. Most of her edits on the paper were micro type edits - this is clichéd, wrong use of word, paragraph confusing -  but some is structural - this spoils the tension, too much on this which doesn't add to your theme or story.  Also, I made a huge structural change by deciding after I'd started working with her edits, to change the tense of the book from 1st person to 3rd. As well, we've had ongoing conversations about the structure of the book - imagining a different beginning and moving great chunks of text around or jettisoning it. My point is that moving from the micro to the macro isn't all bad. Most writers will tell you the opposite - do all the macro stuff first - why struggle with the clichés in a passage that might not even exist after you've done a major macro sweep? And I have no answer for that.

When I was delivering my first child, the Scottish midwife suggested I get on my hands and knees. I won't tell you what I suggested she do, as I've come to forgive myself for things uttered during labour. The point is that although I'm quite sure she was correct in her belief, that for most women, the position is helpful in labour. But not for me. She might as well have told me to sprout wings and fly out of the labour room - oops no - come to think of it, it was a supply closet - a lunar eclipse had filled the labour rooms and beyond.  I think that will be the same for some of you with any technique or convention when it comes to revising. I would suggest that we try some of these things if they seem imaginable, and not to fight our gut instinct with others.

This is all to say that my workshop will fluctuate between the micro and the macro - let me know how it goes, as we labour to deliver these works, in pain and joy!

Today's workshop is to focus on Structure (Rhythm and Tension).
Take the chapter or paragraph or story you are revising and ask yourself these questions as you reread:
Is the drama dramatic? This is mainly a question of the lead-up to a crisis - too long and the reader loses interest - too short and it feels phoney.
Is your narrative sagging at this point? Listen to your own boredom with anything you write! Don't think you're more intelligent than your reader - if you are bored (even if you've gone over it a gazillion times) you can bet the reader will be too.
Do I need to reorder the scenes to have the rhythm and tension needed to serve the story? Building a story is like designing a house - we think the bathroom has to go in this one spot - then in the middle of the night, we wake up our partner with a brilliant solution to another problem - it requires moving the bathroom. Can we do it? We will always be reluctant to change the order of our work - we think once we have it down that way - it is the only way to do it. But that is not true. Notice that I said  - it is like designing a house. In the designing phase we must be able to freely move elements around until we get the pleasing and useful shape. Writing is as much plastic as that.
If you are writing mystery then structure is all the more important. In literary fiction it can sometimes take a lesser role - as long as everything else is sharp. But no fiction can do without tension. None - tension is what makes the bridge stand up so we can drive over it. Even if all we want to know is whether the young man eventually leaves home - we need to feel the tension of his choice.
Now, I'm going to go apply that to the chapter I'm revising. I will post before and after photos!
Please jump in, in any way you wish.