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RevisionistSeptember 23, 2007 This past week I finished revising The Mud of the Place for -- dare I hope? -- the last time. This revision was nowhere near as extensive as previous ones, though the new version is six pages and about two thousand words shorter than its predecessor. It's officially "Take 5." Take 4 was twenty-five pages shorter than Take 3, and Take 3 was twenty-five pages shorter than Take 2. Take 2 sprawled, and Take 1 sprawled even worse. Before Take 1 there was an unnumbered draft that I aborted at about three hundred pages because most of my assumptions about where the novel was going and how it would end turned out to be wrong. In notebooks and yellow pads I keep finding old notes and speculations about plot and character. I have no recollection of making any of these notes, but they're in my inimitably illegible handwriting so I know I wrote them. I love revising. Revising is a kind of editing, and editing I know how to do. Which isn't to say that revising and editing aren't as mysterious in their way as first-drafting. Once the framework is in place, it calls the shots. Turn that paragraph inside out, make the last sentence the first -- eureka! Suddenly the previous scene segues seamlessly into the next and one phrase glints off another in a way that may make me laugh, or look at a character's action in a different light. I'm running along and suddenly one foot, both feet are stuck in mud: What's that sentence doing here? Never mind that the sentence or sequence has survived several major drafts and many rereadings: it's gone. How do I know? I just know. Discussing revision, a poet I workshopped with long time ago talked about getting rid of "soft ice" -- words that don't carry enough weight to justify their presence. Ice that you fall through, muck you get stuck in: out, out, out. Often I find hints that in early drafts I didn't entirely trust those words: I paraphrased or elaborated on them close by. Nearly always one version gets dumped. Sometimes they both do. Early-drafting means laying planks, erecting scaffolds, making molds, all of which are essential to the final draft but must be knocked aside once the final can stand on its own. The trick is telling what's part of the process and what's the final product. Something that starts out one can turn into the other. Sometimes you want to leave the wiring exposed and a few tools lying around the construction site. Another story I heard even longer ago: a sculptor (Inuit, I think) is whittling a block of wood, cutting here, scraping there, and finally, when the head of a seal emerges from the wood, he says, "Aha! I knew all along you were in there!" That's what I love about revising. I've got a big block of words, but I know what shape is in there: all I have to do is uncover and reveal it. First-drafting on the other hand -- first-drafting is exhausting. First-drafting is slogging a trail through uncharted forest in twitchy light. Birds screech off to one side, coyotes howl in the distance, brambles tear at your legs, mosquitoes bite your cheek, and you can't see any of them. I'm working on a sequence from Squatters' Speakeasy that involves Giles and Mama Segredo. I have no idea what I'm looking for. What I'm doing isn't a bit like uncovering the seal in a block of wood. It's more like tending the forest and looking for the right tree, all the while knowing that there is no "right tree" but I'll recognize it when I find it. I'm wandering all over creation, following Giles, following Mama, paying particular attention whenever one thinks about the other. I've got well over 20 typed pages in this section, and quite a few notebook pages covered in green-ink scrawlings, and I know for absolute certain that most of it is scaffolding and guy wires -- the block of wood within which I'll find the story of a night-time car ride that Giles and Mama are about to take. Giles was going to go alone. Mama is the last person he wanted to come along, mainly because he's planning to break the law. But he's going to ask her along, and they're going to go together. Don't ask me how I know this. I just do. Still, I keep thinking that all the words I've written in the last few days are a complete waste of time, even though I've learned a lot about Giles and a lot about Mama. Everyone thinks Mama is a by-the-book Catholic -- who would have thought her relationship with God and her take on church teachings could be so heterodox? It's all fascinating, but my practical, time-and-money-conscious side can't believe it has anything to do with Giles and Mama driving the Beach Road to Edgartown. That side of me wants to cut, quite literally, to the chase, hack through the brambles and the theological ramblings get on with it. But I can't. Don't ask me how I know that either. I just do.
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