Just this morning writing in my journal, trying to start a personal essay, I dissed it. This is a timely message, one I need to hear again and again and again. Thank you.
I stuggle with editing and her insistence that it's really REVISION that we are doing - reimagining might just be what I need to get serious about it. Once a project, a draft is done, especially a difficult one to tell, I don't want to look it in the eye again right away. Things that are hard to get out, then stutter the words AGAIN? But I like this revision definition, I can work with rethinking, reimagining a different ending, or a piece of it I overlooked, or maybe made too much of. I think I can do that.
I have a bad habit of posting my Substacks with only Spellcheck proofing and not big revisions. I know I should do them in Word form first but I'm lazy and like to pop the pictures in as a go. So I just posted one late at night that I had written and LOST (on the phone app) a week ago. And I was careless. My husband found 7 or 8 mistakes. Worse than usual. Spelling error on the city (it's about place), fagged instead of flagged -- and more.:-( !
Revision. Thanks Jeannine! (and this post surely came from the place-based work happening in WITD. If I get it clean enough to post a note, I'll reference that. (when I'm fresh and caffeinated.
Your writing is so beautiful it makes me cry. When I read it, I feel like words are magic and I finally understand what creativity really is. And now, my cheeks are wet again.
I'm a terrible reviser. This is, in part, because most writing I have done has not been creative in nature. I could see the end from the beginning. I'm writing two of those pieces this week--one about the plant burdock and one about the impact the Big, Beautiful Bill will have on rural Emergency Medicine (spoiler alert, it's not beautiful).
HOWEVER, I am writing a book right now, and the inimitable, wonderful Emily Levin has given me a sort of mantra for writing the first draft. She reminded me the only point of writing the first draft is to take the inside your head book and put it outside your head. Anything beyond that is basically procrastination at this point. My plan is to type what is in my head, plus the researchy bits in my first draft, then get my notebook out and see if I can make this doctor-y book poetic and beautiful, my goal is a medical version of Braiding Sweetgrass.
Emily! My first day back on Substack in what feels like forever, and I get a beautiful mantra from you at the perfect moment. The time has come for me to get my book outside my head, because all the thinking about the right focus and right structure is indeed, At its core, procrastinating. Xo
Wow. I love this essay on revision so much, Jeannine! I'm currently revising a short story per some excellent feedback, and your words about re-imagining and opening myself up to new possibilities is just what I needed.
The intensive we're doing right now has made me go back into sections of the novel I'm writing and infuse it with so much more emotion using place as a character instead of letting it just be a place I give a name to and little else. I'm starting to be more critical as a reader and noticing how some writers "set" their novels in a particular place, but then miss out on meaningful work that involves the place they have chosen. Work that would give so much more life to what they've written.
This is wonderful. It's been gratifying to hear how the place intensive has been spilling into people's work! I am hearing it a lot, and I love it! That's the point of the intensives, for sure. What you write for the snippets is practice (though the snippets might become something, but that's secondary). The main thing is, the craft element gets to be applied in your work. Yay!
I might have even suggested an impromptu road trip to get some good place-based observation and detail in me. I'm not saying it was the ONLY reason . . . ;-). Don't tell my husband, who did almost all the driving.
I love this. Thank you, Jeannine. "We need a kind of steadfast ferocity to rip apart the comfortable narratives we’ve told ourselves." This whole piece resonated especially on the heels of getting a rejection email from an actual human editor at the NYT Modern Love column.
And what Erin said here in the piece you linked to, "I had to stop clinging to where the story began for me, and discover where it began for the reader." This hit me so hard in such a good way. The details they talk about cutting and cutting and cutting. Things that were important to them, that made them feel something, but that did not to anything for the reader. It's given me a whole new way to look at the pieces I'm working on--especially the parts the seem important to me.
Like you said, (I'm paraphrasing here) do they tell the truth in a weighty way that gives the truth life?
Wasn't that a wonderful essay? Both writers were so generous in sharing their processes, and if you haven't read Erin's essay, the one in Greece, it is remarkable. I have not read the piece the other writer is talking about, but Erin's piece is a knockout.
When I had my mastectomy I revised my body and in so doing have discovered many interesting things about myself and I must admit I am very glad to know these things.
This PLACE intensive has blown up all my longer essays, all written in the seventh months prior to WITD, and shorter (usually 400 word "shimmers and shards" of WITD and SCHOOL exercises.) All need to be revised. PLACE has brought me much closer to my core self. Imaging a series of concentric circles, core self being at the center. My feelings, at the time of those experiences, being in the ring just outside the core. Ive been writing, in PLACE, about living in Palos Verdes between the ages of 12-18, with my uncle and his wife. Just describing the outside of the house and the landmarks, brought up the emotions, long buried (and im turning 67 in three days).
This email about revising essays, today, has illuminated how avoidant I have been in writing. Not that I need to vomit up all my feelings, but it certainly has obscured my healing, and the questions: what am I writing, what is my story, and for whom am I writing?
Just curious, Trisha -- do you dream that place? Does writing about it cause you to dream it? I think place dreams are super interesting, and which ones come up repeatedly.
Joanne, no dreams that I recall. Just the tangentially related CPTSD triggers, which I've learned to more quickly identify when I'm in a current distress, what it is reminding me of and taking me back to, something in my past.
This is so beautiful, Trisha. And sometimes we need to avoid until we are ready to not avoid. I also believe very powerfully that working with concrete specific exterior imagery is so much safer for us psychologically and emotionally than going deep into interiority. It is also a trauma-informed approach. So it may be that for you, working with WITD exercises, which always steer us to exteriority, is breaking some things open for you in what I hope are safe ways.
Yes, I've felt safe, and held, here with you and the WITD community. I've commented before how I read nearly everything in my therapist's office, working through issues in tandem with writing. Even the thread about working the "Make Miracles in Forty Days," I felt deep reluctance (and yes, some trauma) about my parents' deaths, and I will never experience gratitude for their deaths. Yet I felt a searing light illuminating my desire to write about and experience gratitude. Flipping through the book, I discovered, on page 56, "...to say "Thank you for the death of my son. I haven't done it and don't plan to do it, either. But I can approach the issue from another angle by writing that I'm grateful for how deeply I miss Shane, how angry I am that he died, how numb I feel..."
So thank you, oh so much, for your guidance in finding new ways to press forward with our writing, with our living, in keeping this place here a sacred place.
Oh my gosh, Trisha, that's incredible what you found on page 56. It's like it is there for you (but also for all of us, because we all probably have something that is for us so painful, so devastating).
“In both writing and life, revising teaches us to become survivors of our own choices. We learn what can be left behind without crumbling. We learn that the self is not static; it is a manuscript we carry throughout our lives, longing to be re-read and reconsidered regularly. We are human beings, I like to say, not human beens.”
This resonated hard this morning (it’s morning where I am). Thanks.
This essay is so liberating, Jeannine. For me, revision is a two-edged sword---my perfectionism is at the root of this. Perfectionism causes me to go overboard with things often. Sometimes, good enough is enough. Even when revising one's writings.
Years ago, when we had first moved to south Mississippi, I wanted to learn how to make gumbo. I downloaded a copy of a recipe from Emeril Lagasse, an expert if ever there was one. Then I downloaded 10 other recopies for gumbo. There was no value-added by my getting these extra recipes. Sure, an ingredient or two or an instruction here or there may have varied, but one recipe was not significantly better than the Lagasse recipe I started with.
So it is when I am revising---my perfectionism makes it hard for me to know when to stop. Do you have thoughts or wisdom to share about this challenge I face? I am sure that I am not alone in this.
Revision as perception and liberation in life and on the page. Yea yes yes. This is glorious!
My revision issue is, as I’ve mentioned before, that like cutting bangs I can get carried away and accidentally cut the life out of something. It just keeps getting shorter and more uneven! I think the part I am missing is the bravery required to come back to those revision bangs after a long time away, as you say up top, and revisit with fresh eyes to see what life is still there and dare myself to add anew without looking backwards—Revise where I am currently being rather than where I have been. ( I love that- thanks for it!)
Revision as life happens even when we don’t open that drawer, because life, but how we meet it, as you say, is where the magic happens. Feeling that keenly right now. This space and its inhabitants have opened me up in the writing and my life and I am so darn grateful !!!
I wish I could post a picture of me as a five year old with very crooked bangs to illustrate your post. I'm told my dad took a scissors to my hair Easter morning when he thought it didn't look good and he wanted to show me off. Oops!
I know some writers feel that revising can cut the life out, and I know it can. But I think that happens most often when we are approaching revision from a more technical perspective versus something somewhat more "wild." This too is something I would like to write about. I taught a workshop a few years ago called Radical Revision, and I want to revisit it, because it was really really good.
Did you ever cut your kids' bangs when they were little? We tried once, DISASTER! :) My natural inclination is definitely more toward the, "eff it, I'm just going to grow out the bangs, clip them in a bobby pin and pretend it's good enough" :)
Vital as always. I'm in the midst of gathering very ugly godawful raw cookie dough to start playing with, and I'm running into all the ways I *used* to tell each story, how it might be habitual, how it might need to be re-seen.
That and I'm massively revising the screenplay I was hired to write; I'm shaking in my little pink boots because, when I finally broke it open, it's nothing like what my client requested. I need to risk showing him something he's never asked for, in the hopes that we might discover something better together in the mess. Thanks for the permission to be scared, which is the only gateway to growth.
Congrats on the screenplay gig! And I am crossing my fingers for you. Also, I've done a fair bit of contract and ghostwriting, and I have had it happen where a client does not quite resonate with my execution of the vision. And you know what I did? I rewrote it their way, even if I didn't like it as much. No big deal, so good for you for taking the risk.
Jeannine this is exactly what I needed to read today and in fact I see myself re-reading it many times. You see, I’ve been avoiding a necessary revision of my ‘completed’ novel that I withdrew from agent queries after it wasn’t landing its champion. Over six weeks ago I received excellent detailed actionable feedback from a writing pro (published author and former MFA professor) on my opening pages, insights that could guide me all the way through a full mss revision. And yet I hesitate, say to myself ‘maybe tomorrow’ I’ll open the file. It would be draft 12, I think, and yet I believe in this novel. I have been a hard working novelist (if not yet published) my entire life. I finish. Many times. And yet maybe because my life is in a pretty heavy revision—new country, new language, new unexpected health challenges—that has something to do with my lack of energy or inspiration for the novel revision. How can that be when I want so much to see this novel out in the world, to find its readers? I know these musings will find a kind and understanding landing place here. Grateful for you and for this essay today. Thank you!
Amy - big credit to you for getting So far on your novel. You have such a huge change cycle going on, it must be difficult to seek out more change. Maybe if you could look at it somehow as 'coming home' to what the novel is supposed to be? And also, just pace yourself, right? The mind/body can only take so much change at once, I think. Maybe your body just needs to get stable to hit those changes.
A couple of weeks ago, (I am just now remembering this), I was writing a poem for someone in a dream. I woke up and remembered the first two lines. And while they weren't great, I thought, 'huh! I'm writing in my sleep.' and then ,I was revising in my sleep, until I woke up, and tried to fix the rhythm of those lines. Our brains are so strange, especially in that semi-lucid state. If only I could do real edits that way!
Joanne thank you for your encouragement, so kind of you. I like this concept of 'coming home' to what the novel is supposed to be. And I think I could pace myself--I would have to, physically--but I am so skittish about diving back into the work. I appreciated hearing about your dreaming writing state, and yes, wouldn't it be great if our subconscious did that work for us while we slept!
Amy, I am happy for you that this resonated, and I know that you will find your way with your novel, whatever that way might be. The novel will finally tell you if it wants more of you. I know it will.
Amy, I recognize that feeling of knowing I need to re-vision and yet find I lack the energy, as you say, to dive in. I also know that re-visioning my life, while not easy, has been an ongoing practice. At this moment, I am re-visioning what life can be as an elder. No clear ideas, except to carry on writing in this community and in other forum. As an elder, I don't talk about re-tiring (e.g. putting new wheels on the same car), rather about re-imagining.
Ray, I love how you punctuate and re-define revision to "re-vision,' just as you do "re-tiring." This is a really helpful perspective. I am re-visioning my novel. That sounds a lot more generative and exciting, putting a vision to it rather than seeing it as an impossible or arduous task.
Just this morning writing in my journal, trying to start a personal essay, I dissed it. This is a timely message, one I need to hear again and again and again. Thank you.
I stuggle with editing and her insistence that it's really REVISION that we are doing - reimagining might just be what I need to get serious about it. Once a project, a draft is done, especially a difficult one to tell, I don't want to look it in the eye again right away. Things that are hard to get out, then stutter the words AGAIN? But I like this revision definition, I can work with rethinking, reimagining a different ending, or a piece of it I overlooked, or maybe made too much of. I think I can do that.
I have a bad habit of posting my Substacks with only Spellcheck proofing and not big revisions. I know I should do them in Word form first but I'm lazy and like to pop the pictures in as a go. So I just posted one late at night that I had written and LOST (on the phone app) a week ago. And I was careless. My husband found 7 or 8 mistakes. Worse than usual. Spelling error on the city (it's about place), fagged instead of flagged -- and more.:-( !
Revision. Thanks Jeannine! (and this post surely came from the place-based work happening in WITD. If I get it clean enough to post a note, I'll reference that. (when I'm fresh and caffeinated.
Your writing is so beautiful it makes me cry. When I read it, I feel like words are magic and I finally understand what creativity really is. And now, my cheeks are wet again.
This is a beautiful thing to say, Taru. Thank you so much.
I'm a terrible reviser. This is, in part, because most writing I have done has not been creative in nature. I could see the end from the beginning. I'm writing two of those pieces this week--one about the plant burdock and one about the impact the Big, Beautiful Bill will have on rural Emergency Medicine (spoiler alert, it's not beautiful).
HOWEVER, I am writing a book right now, and the inimitable, wonderful Emily Levin has given me a sort of mantra for writing the first draft. She reminded me the only point of writing the first draft is to take the inside your head book and put it outside your head. Anything beyond that is basically procrastination at this point. My plan is to type what is in my head, plus the researchy bits in my first draft, then get my notebook out and see if I can make this doctor-y book poetic and beautiful, my goal is a medical version of Braiding Sweetgrass.
Cool, Amy! I think Emily is write and I get you! I want the draft to come out close to done. Not possible!
This is the way, Amy. Some people call it draft zero!
also, so exciting that you are writing the book!
sounds inviting, Amy! Go for it, inside OUT!
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Emily! My first day back on Substack in what feels like forever, and I get a beautiful mantra from you at the perfect moment. The time has come for me to get my book outside my head, because all the thinking about the right focus and right structure is indeed, At its core, procrastinating. Xo
Welcome back!! And so happy that landed for you! 💜💜💜💜
"And that—this search for the shape and heft of truth—is the major work of revision."
<3
Wow. I love this essay on revision so much, Jeannine! I'm currently revising a short story per some excellent feedback, and your words about re-imagining and opening myself up to new possibilities is just what I needed.
The intensive we're doing right now has made me go back into sections of the novel I'm writing and infuse it with so much more emotion using place as a character instead of letting it just be a place I give a name to and little else. I'm starting to be more critical as a reader and noticing how some writers "set" their novels in a particular place, but then miss out on meaningful work that involves the place they have chosen. Work that would give so much more life to what they've written.
This is wonderful. It's been gratifying to hear how the place intensive has been spilling into people's work! I am hearing it a lot, and I love it! That's the point of the intensives, for sure. What you write for the snippets is practice (though the snippets might become something, but that's secondary). The main thing is, the craft element gets to be applied in your work. Yay!
I might have even suggested an impromptu road trip to get some good place-based observation and detail in me. I'm not saying it was the ONLY reason . . . ;-). Don't tell my husband, who did almost all the driving.
Profoundly true in both life and writing.
<3
I love this. Thank you, Jeannine. "We need a kind of steadfast ferocity to rip apart the comfortable narratives we’ve told ourselves." This whole piece resonated especially on the heels of getting a rejection email from an actual human editor at the NYT Modern Love column.
And what Erin said here in the piece you linked to, "I had to stop clinging to where the story began for me, and discover where it began for the reader." This hit me so hard in such a good way. The details they talk about cutting and cutting and cutting. Things that were important to them, that made them feel something, but that did not to anything for the reader. It's given me a whole new way to look at the pieces I'm working on--especially the parts the seem important to me.
Like you said, (I'm paraphrasing here) do they tell the truth in a weighty way that gives the truth life?
xoxo
Wasn't that a wonderful essay? Both writers were so generous in sharing their processes, and if you haven't read Erin's essay, the one in Greece, it is remarkable. I have not read the piece the other writer is talking about, but Erin's piece is a knockout.
When I had my mastectomy I revised my body and in so doing have discovered many interesting things about myself and I must admit I am very glad to know these things.
That's profound, Monica. What a way to picture that whole experience and how it changed you.
🙏💜
Well this is just kind of an astonishing parallel. Thank you for sharing this!
It’s just what came to mind. A life/an essay I’m still revising my way towards.
I really appreciate you sharing this, Monica.
😘
This PLACE intensive has blown up all my longer essays, all written in the seventh months prior to WITD, and shorter (usually 400 word "shimmers and shards" of WITD and SCHOOL exercises.) All need to be revised. PLACE has brought me much closer to my core self. Imaging a series of concentric circles, core self being at the center. My feelings, at the time of those experiences, being in the ring just outside the core. Ive been writing, in PLACE, about living in Palos Verdes between the ages of 12-18, with my uncle and his wife. Just describing the outside of the house and the landmarks, brought up the emotions, long buried (and im turning 67 in three days).
This email about revising essays, today, has illuminated how avoidant I have been in writing. Not that I need to vomit up all my feelings, but it certainly has obscured my healing, and the questions: what am I writing, what is my story, and for whom am I writing?
Just curious, Trisha -- do you dream that place? Does writing about it cause you to dream it? I think place dreams are super interesting, and which ones come up repeatedly.
Joanne, no dreams that I recall. Just the tangentially related CPTSD triggers, which I've learned to more quickly identify when I'm in a current distress, what it is reminding me of and taking me back to, something in my past.
This is so beautiful, Trisha. And sometimes we need to avoid until we are ready to not avoid. I also believe very powerfully that working with concrete specific exterior imagery is so much safer for us psychologically and emotionally than going deep into interiority. It is also a trauma-informed approach. So it may be that for you, working with WITD exercises, which always steer us to exteriority, is breaking some things open for you in what I hope are safe ways.
Yes, I've felt safe, and held, here with you and the WITD community. I've commented before how I read nearly everything in my therapist's office, working through issues in tandem with writing. Even the thread about working the "Make Miracles in Forty Days," I felt deep reluctance (and yes, some trauma) about my parents' deaths, and I will never experience gratitude for their deaths. Yet I felt a searing light illuminating my desire to write about and experience gratitude. Flipping through the book, I discovered, on page 56, "...to say "Thank you for the death of my son. I haven't done it and don't plan to do it, either. But I can approach the issue from another angle by writing that I'm grateful for how deeply I miss Shane, how angry I am that he died, how numb I feel..."
So thank you, oh so much, for your guidance in finding new ways to press forward with our writing, with our living, in keeping this place here a sacred place.
Oh my gosh, Trisha, that's incredible what you found on page 56. It's like it is there for you (but also for all of us, because we all probably have something that is for us so painful, so devastating).
“In both writing and life, revising teaches us to become survivors of our own choices. We learn what can be left behind without crumbling. We learn that the self is not static; it is a manuscript we carry throughout our lives, longing to be re-read and reconsidered regularly. We are human beings, I like to say, not human beens.”
This resonated hard this morning (it’s morning where I am). Thanks.
Thank you, Nica!
Me too Nica!!
This essay is so liberating, Jeannine. For me, revision is a two-edged sword---my perfectionism is at the root of this. Perfectionism causes me to go overboard with things often. Sometimes, good enough is enough. Even when revising one's writings.
Years ago, when we had first moved to south Mississippi, I wanted to learn how to make gumbo. I downloaded a copy of a recipe from Emeril Lagasse, an expert if ever there was one. Then I downloaded 10 other recopies for gumbo. There was no value-added by my getting these extra recipes. Sure, an ingredient or two or an instruction here or there may have varied, but one recipe was not significantly better than the Lagasse recipe I started with.
So it is when I am revising---my perfectionism makes it hard for me to know when to stop. Do you have thoughts or wisdom to share about this challenge I face? I am sure that I am not alone in this.
This is something I'd like to write about, Craig. It's a question that comes up a lot and I do have thoughts about it, not surprisingly
Revision as perception and liberation in life and on the page. Yea yes yes. This is glorious!
My revision issue is, as I’ve mentioned before, that like cutting bangs I can get carried away and accidentally cut the life out of something. It just keeps getting shorter and more uneven! I think the part I am missing is the bravery required to come back to those revision bangs after a long time away, as you say up top, and revisit with fresh eyes to see what life is still there and dare myself to add anew without looking backwards—Revise where I am currently being rather than where I have been. ( I love that- thanks for it!)
Revision as life happens even when we don’t open that drawer, because life, but how we meet it, as you say, is where the magic happens. Feeling that keenly right now. This space and its inhabitants have opened me up in the writing and my life and I am so darn grateful !!!
I wish I could post a picture of me as a five year old with very crooked bangs to illustrate your post. I'm told my dad took a scissors to my hair Easter morning when he thought it didn't look good and he wanted to show me off. Oops!
!!!! I love this, Joanne!
I know some writers feel that revising can cut the life out, and I know it can. But I think that happens most often when we are approaching revision from a more technical perspective versus something somewhat more "wild." This too is something I would like to write about. I taught a workshop a few years ago called Radical Revision, and I want to revisit it, because it was really really good.
Sign me up! And yes- I go cerebral and technical- it sucks the blood out. Or can. But I also need to pick it up again. It is not finished, you know?
Oh boy, I so relate!!!! I’ve abandoned so many essays because I killed their spark in revision….
I need to pick them back up, I am realizing!
Did you ever cut your kids' bangs when they were little? We tried once, DISASTER! :) My natural inclination is definitely more toward the, "eff it, I'm just going to grow out the bangs, clip them in a bobby pin and pretend it's good enough" :)
Hahaha why does the bangs analogy work for so many things?
Haha! Once, also disaster- that is what older siblings are for. The youngest has no idea how he coasted!
I’ve got a document file full of bad bangs 😂
Ha!
Hahahaha
Hahaha
Vital as always. I'm in the midst of gathering very ugly godawful raw cookie dough to start playing with, and I'm running into all the ways I *used* to tell each story, how it might be habitual, how it might need to be re-seen.
That and I'm massively revising the screenplay I was hired to write; I'm shaking in my little pink boots because, when I finally broke it open, it's nothing like what my client requested. I need to risk showing him something he's never asked for, in the hopes that we might discover something better together in the mess. Thanks for the permission to be scared, which is the only gateway to growth.
Good luck!
Congrats on the screenplay gig! And I am crossing my fingers for you. Also, I've done a fair bit of contract and ghostwriting, and I have had it happen where a client does not quite resonate with my execution of the vision. And you know what I did? I rewrote it their way, even if I didn't like it as much. No big deal, so good for you for taking the risk.
You're so right. I have a fallback version of this with the hokey Hallmark vibes he wants, but he'll have to pry it from my cold, metatextual hands.
OOOH, Very Courageous, and "the path less traveled" for sure. Best of luck with your adventure and co-pilot!
Thank you!
The habits in how we write, this stood out to me.
You mean I don't have to mine every traumatic experience for jokes??
I love revision, and your thoughts on revision. In writing and in life.
Good for you! I am still learning the habit, slowly
Are good writers good revisers? Probably yes. Otherwise, I'd run from it.
Thank you, Rita xoxo
Jeannine this is exactly what I needed to read today and in fact I see myself re-reading it many times. You see, I’ve been avoiding a necessary revision of my ‘completed’ novel that I withdrew from agent queries after it wasn’t landing its champion. Over six weeks ago I received excellent detailed actionable feedback from a writing pro (published author and former MFA professor) on my opening pages, insights that could guide me all the way through a full mss revision. And yet I hesitate, say to myself ‘maybe tomorrow’ I’ll open the file. It would be draft 12, I think, and yet I believe in this novel. I have been a hard working novelist (if not yet published) my entire life. I finish. Many times. And yet maybe because my life is in a pretty heavy revision—new country, new language, new unexpected health challenges—that has something to do with my lack of energy or inspiration for the novel revision. How can that be when I want so much to see this novel out in the world, to find its readers? I know these musings will find a kind and understanding landing place here. Grateful for you and for this essay today. Thank you!
Amy - big credit to you for getting So far on your novel. You have such a huge change cycle going on, it must be difficult to seek out more change. Maybe if you could look at it somehow as 'coming home' to what the novel is supposed to be? And also, just pace yourself, right? The mind/body can only take so much change at once, I think. Maybe your body just needs to get stable to hit those changes.
A couple of weeks ago, (I am just now remembering this), I was writing a poem for someone in a dream. I woke up and remembered the first two lines. And while they weren't great, I thought, 'huh! I'm writing in my sleep.' and then ,I was revising in my sleep, until I woke up, and tried to fix the rhythm of those lines. Our brains are so strange, especially in that semi-lucid state. If only I could do real edits that way!
Joanne thank you for your encouragement, so kind of you. I like this concept of 'coming home' to what the novel is supposed to be. And I think I could pace myself--I would have to, physically--but I am so skittish about diving back into the work. I appreciated hearing about your dreaming writing state, and yes, wouldn't it be great if our subconscious did that work for us while we slept!
Amy, I am happy for you that this resonated, and I know that you will find your way with your novel, whatever that way might be. The novel will finally tell you if it wants more of you. I know it will.
Amy, I recognize that feeling of knowing I need to re-vision and yet find I lack the energy, as you say, to dive in. I also know that re-visioning my life, while not easy, has been an ongoing practice. At this moment, I am re-visioning what life can be as an elder. No clear ideas, except to carry on writing in this community and in other forum. As an elder, I don't talk about re-tiring (e.g. putting new wheels on the same car), rather about re-imagining.
I like it, Ray. I like the re-vision as an elder.
Thank you Joanne for the appreciation.
Ray, I love how you punctuate and re-define revision to "re-vision,' just as you do "re-tiring." This is a really helpful perspective. I am re-visioning my novel. That sounds a lot more generative and exciting, putting a vision to it rather than seeing it as an impossible or arduous task.
Delighted you see it this way.