Writing: Revision

When I was young, I did not understand revision. That took me practicing law. Then I had given up trying to write fiction. Now, I like reading how published authors revise their work. I thought myself strange in revising my openings when I completed a work until I read Joyce Carol Oates does the same thing.

Therefore, I read Joshua Henkins' interview On getting past the first draft with interest. This being an interview, excerpting is difficult. Here are two samples:

Do you have any general tips for revision, or do you think that it’s entirely case-by-case, book-by-book, writer-by-writer?

I definitely think it’s case-by-case and book-by-book. Maybe writer-by-writer. I do try to ask myself, “Does this have to be here?” I feel like the burden of proof is on keeping something in, not cutting it. Which is how you get from 3,000 pages to 300 pages.

*** 

Yeah, no, I know. I’m being a bit glib here. I’m just saying that I think there are a lot of different ways to be new. And I think the wish to be new, the wish to be big, hurts fiction. And I think if people were a little less obsessed with being new, they’d be newer. And if they were a little less obsessed with being big, they’d be bigger. To me, that’s the paradox. That’s the irony. And I think that, yeah, very few of us are going to write books that people will be reading in a hundred, two hundred years. And that’s okay. I think you can write a really good book.

sch

 1/15/22