All writing is revision
Hello, friends!
As I write this it is Sunday, March 12, and my brief spring vacation has come to an end. It was simultaneously very productive (I finished a major part of the latest draft of The Dark Age) and very not (Squish and I watched a ton of monster movies).
Last week, in my Dark Age newsletter (if you're not subscribed, here's how) I talked a bit about revision. I've been in the thick of it, so it's on my mind.
In a recent newsletter, the author Robin Sloan discussed The Lord of the Rings. He's been reading a four-volume history of the writing of the novels, and shared some of the more interesting things that he discovered.
For example, Sloan discovered that Tolkien's worldbuilding wasn't as methodical or exacting as you may believe:
Tolkien, for all his vaunted designs, only got to The Good Stuff when he was IN it, really working the text of the novels (or novel, if you consider The Lord of the Rings one big book). He could not worldbuild his way into a workable story; he had to muddle and discover and revise, just like the rest of us.
I genuinely love it when major literary figures are revealed to be just winging it, like the rest of us.
Sloan continues:
Early in the published version of The Lord of the Rings (hereafter, LOTR) we learn about the inscription on the One Ring, which provides the whole engine of the plot:
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
The Lord of the Rings is one of the great fictional histories. And yet when Tolkien began writing it, he didn't have it all figured out.
Sloan goes on to say:
Not only was the inscription missing from the early drafts of LOTR ... the whole logic of the ring was missing, too. In its place was a mess. The ring possessed by Bilbo Baggins was one of thousands the Dark Lord manufactured, all basically equivalent: they made their wearers invisible, and eventually claimed their souls. They were like cursed candies scattered by Sauron across Middle-earth.
Tolkien’s explanation of this, in his first draft, is about about as compelling as what I just wrote.
Sloan concludes:
There are several revised approaches to “what’s the deal with the ring?” presented in The History of The Lord of the Rings, and, as you read through the drafts, the material just …...slowly gets better! Bit by bit, the familiar angles emerge. There seems not to have been any magic moment: no electric thought in the bathtub, circa 1931, that sent Tolkien rushing to find a pen.
It was just revision.
I find this totally inspiring.
If there's one drum I find myself banging in these newsletters, it's that revision is the secret to everything. No first draft, or second, or fifth is everything it could be, but with attentiveness and determination, a writer can transform a decent idea into a great one.
Bernard Malamud put it this way:
First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it. ... The first draft of a book is the most uncertain—where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better. Revision is one of the true pleasures of writing.
As always, Verlyn Klinkenborg, in Several short sentences about writing manages to reduce the idea to something so simple I'm always embarrassed by how complicated I've made things:
All writing is revision. That's not what you learned in school. In school you learned to write a draft and then revise.
But imagine this: You begin to compose a sentence in your head. You don't write it down. You let the sentence play through your mind again. (It's only six words long.) You replace one or two of the words. You adjust the rhythm by changing the verb. You discard the metaphor. You decide you like the sentence. You write it down. Is this composition? Or revision? It's both. Composing a sentence always involves revision. Unless you write down the words of a sentence exactly as they pop into your head. And why would you do that?
I mentioned above that I'd finished a major part of a rewrite, and it's true. On Friday I finished rewriting the whole of The Dark Age, scene by scene, taking care to add some new necessary tissue along the way. The end result? This "little novel" I've been trying to write has somehow wound up the longest thing I've ever written. But at the moment it's all too fresh to judge, so I've printed off a copy (my first novel to require more than a ream of paper) and set it aside. I'll give myself a few weeks to let it breathe, then return to it with a red pen, and start cutting and simplifying and correcting.
For now, though, a big step is complete, and I'm going to go take a nap.
✏️Until next time,
Jg
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