Another Office Hours Q&A where George has simply floored me. I am always on the lookout for examples in life where the spirit of a thing, the embedded, intended lovingness, surpasses the technique. I think this is the realm of art. It is, as George has so aptly titled this post, about the flavor of things. And I find it here in Story Club so frequently that I am amazed.
Today, amongst George’s thoughts about revisions, and editing, and drafts, and when to print out, we come to this, an absolute gift: “The way we ought to feel, according to me: “I am in this dream called life, living it, sometimes feeling trapped in it, sometimes feeling blessed to be in it, and I want – well, I want to leave something lovely behind, for those who will follow me (and for those who are out there in it with me right now), something that, through its complicated beauty, will bear testimony to how crazy and intense and nice it was being here. I hope to reassure and console with this work. (But not falsely.)”
And I, sitting here on my couch, am unable to read much further due to the tears welling up in my eyes….mic drop….walk away….with awe and gratitude. Thank you so much George and thank you questioner for initiating this.
Very helpful post. I'm revising a book-length non-fiction ms right now, and I'm making myself miserable. I don't think I'm doing the book much good either.
The thing has been accepted for publication, and I have a number of (anonymous) readers' comments to contend with. I'm getting a little better about those: "No, that's not the kind of book I'm trying to write." "Yeah, I could go down this alley, but it would take the argument too far off its path." "Oh, you're right; this isn't clear at all."
But I've been working on this project for several decades, and the most painful thing about the process of revision is the realization that I'm not as sharp as I used to be. (I'm in my mid-70s.) I'm trying hard to worry less about that, and even to think more about what age has brought me other than losing my cognitive edge. Not wisdom, exactly, but more concern for my reader? More sense of sentence-by-sentence style? Hard to say; I'll keep thinking about it.
Thanks to the community here for the chance to get this off my chest. It would be hard to talk about with people who know me. And I'm going to be thinking more about partnership with my book and throwing a party. And tomorrow I'm going to print, print, print, and then read straight through. Yes!
I'm wondering, questioner, if this isn't a case of your just having gotten a bit ahead of yourself. By which I mean that you're fine-tooth editing when you don't have enough story available to edit, that you haven't found the story yet & so can't revise---or edit, though I think revising and editing are two different, though closely related, activities---something that doesn't wholly exist yet. Anyway, this happens to me sometimes, this picking apart, line by line, word by word as you describe it. When it does it's usually a signal that I'm avoiding, for whatever anxious reason, finding the story: I have to write the story but I don't know what the story is yet. When I catch myself at this, I stop making sentences, serviceable sentences, perfect sentences or anything in between. Instead, I switch to scribbling (usually by hand because I believe writing has a physicality to it that the keyboard doesn't quite honor in the story-finding phase) notes to myself, words or phrases, that might point me in the direction of the story. And I do this on cheap paper or index cards, and I use lots and lots of both. (I'm shameless in my use of paper!) Eventually, I find story. Or not. But what this jotting on cheap paper does, I've found, is that it takes the preciousness out of the process. I've lowered the stakes. Everything is more relaxed, more accessible. I'm no longer in pursuit of the perfect sentence. Now I'm looking for the story. Once I've found it, or at least have some grasp of it, then I can start making good sentences, one after the other, until they pile up & I finally have something to revise. I hope this helps.
The questioner mentions both "line editing" and "structural editing." To me, a writer needs to do the structural work first. I'm not certain what exactly this questioner means by "structural editing," but I'm going to assume it means revising the story's structure--moving parts around, deciding whether the story needs to be told chronologically, out of order, in fragments, in flashbacks, etc. But whatever is decided, that work needs to be done before any sentence work. I mean, it can be a total waste of time to fix five sentences in the opening paragraph only to realize later that, on a structural level, there is no need for the first paragraph at all. So, revise your structure to fit the story you want to tell. And then go into your sentences and cut, add, rewrite, until the sentences hold together in exactly the right way. They should sing--have a rhythm that is noticeable when read aloud. Have a voice. So maybe this is helpful, and maybe not. But I wish you luck with your story!
Thanks for this post. It makes me feel a little less guilty about not thinking about my readers when I write and revise. I mostly just write for myself and revise based on my own feelings.
But this post makes me wonder how editors make their decisions, and how writers might learn from these decisions/processes, and yet diverge from them too. I'm thinking in particular of Raymond Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" and its initial draft, "Beginnings," as edited by Gordon Lish, with all the edits published in The New Yorker. That would be fun for this group to discuss on some future occasion. I read it recently, and it's still kicking around in my head.
The picture of Navalny reading ( with his son?) one of George's books. You can't write about that. Must be so gratifying for you George to see that. Thanks for posting it.
thank you as always for your thoughtful words and beautiful ideas!
some of my favorite moments from this dispatch:
"Reality is reality and concepts are concepts: inadequate word-wrappings, generated out of need, always insufficient."
"The way we ought to feel, according to me: 'I am in this dream called life, living it, sometimes feeling trapped in it, sometimes feeling blessed to be in it, and I want – well, I want to leave something lovely behind, for those who will follow me (and for those who are out there in it with me right now), something that, through its complicated beauty, will bear testimony to how crazy and intense and nice it was being here. I hope to reassure and console with this work. (But not falsely.)'"
"Sometimes my ideas about my writing don’t work for me either"
I’ve been struggling to get a story going. Imposed deadlines (I missed them), assigned edifying reading (they were dull), sat myself at the computer (did clothes shopping). I can spend days/weeks in this Puritan state, metaphorically wearing the drab rags of Serious Writer and slowly spiralling. Time is a gift and look how I’m wasting it and we’re all going to die some day so what *am* I doing with my life, really?
Then I remember I don’t need to atone to the God of Work Ethic. Remember that I think better after a walk. It was so desperate, a couple weeks back I took two long walks in one day. Two loads of sweaty clothes for the wash, but the ideas began flowing. I figured out what was stopping me from starting (muddy characters) and began reading for pleasure. Going for writers who were doing some of what I was missing; letting myself shelve the books again if I thought, ‘Thanks, Cervantes, but you’re not my guy right now’.
After two months of ‘Account for yourself!!’ two weeks of kindness has done me so much good. I knew this (I always know this, down deep) but the guilt to be accountable silenced the intuition to be kind. But it’s the kindness, at least for me, that relaxes my mind enough to think.
So glad to be here with Story Club. What a wonderful question and such a wonderful response that I want to remember, every day. The metaphor about letting your drafts breathe a bit and letting them be a bit lumpy instead of analytically auto piloting the hell out of them reminds me of instructions I’ve seen frequently for pancake batter. Stir it up but not too much. Another case of the Goldilocks zone, which also refers to those precious zones in the universe where life can occur.
Appreciated all of this, especially your observation that a writer must "be watchful for any hint that I might be involved in a downward neurotic spiral (DNS)." Made me laugh, because who hasn't been there with a manuscript? Beware the DNS! Also, that photo of Navalny was so moving. We were talking about his integrity and courage in my book club last week.
I love this question and George's response, so generous it makes me want to try and be more generous myself and share my process. I understand the sense of not moving forward with a story because each time we go to it we start at the beginning and spend whatever time we have write revising. I'm always doing this; it frustrates me. Something I've tried is to give myself permission to change the beginning pages for a few sessions, then go to my desk with the mentality 'OK, this may not be perfect, but it's better than it was, I'll let it slide for now, today I have to move on. My character is just lying around in limbo. I'd better release her. ' I'll read the pages I've already revised fast, slowing down as I approach new material time, I'll start changing the last para and go from there. I keep doing this until I have a full draft. I'll then let it sit for a week or so, don't look at it, maybe think about it when I walk the dog or paint a chair. I'll come back to revise all once. When it seems almost there, I'll read it fast every morning for a week, cutting or changing anything that stalls me as fast as I can. At this stage, I know the story and am looking for anything that irritates me or gets in the way. I think the frustration might serve a purpose at this point, I want to move on, chase another idea flitting by. I know when the story is done not because I think it's perfect ( I will never think it's perfect, and know this about myself) but when I can say I have done all I can, at this point, with this story I'll stop. I ask if I've been true to the story, if it's said what it wants to say and anything I do at this point would be my own fear trying to deny the story it's right to be. It seems no longer about me at this point, the story is it's own little being. And if later, I look at it and want to change it? That's OK, it's just the odd line. I changed the last lines of a story once after it had been published, years later (honestly, nobody minds.) The story in the collection wasn't exactly the same. It was better for it, but I can't beat myself up about not having those lines the first time. It had the benefit of distance and experience I didn't have at the time, and that's fine. Another thing I've tried is pulling myself out of revision mode by skipping ahead, writing a bit that will come later, even if I don't know how I'll get there yet. I'll write it fast. Realising I've just made something happen switches my mindset, from thinking all I do is ponder and ditch commas to boom, I wrote that, I'm a writer, and the decisions come faster. Revision suddenly becomes more focused, there's something in the distance I'm swimming towards. Hope that's helpful anyway (whenever I try to talk about writing my inner critic is like oh, here we go, who do you think you are?!)
An approach that has worked for me (modified recently by a metaphor George used, that his early drafts are like clay he's roughly shaping) is to allow myself to write badly, knowing that I can improve it a little with each revision.
It's not a foolproof approach -- my inner critic, personified here (https://www.journalofexpressivewriting.com/post/the-inner-critic-returns-from-the-dead), still rears its fearsome head -- but over many iterations, this permission-to-write-badly method has weakened that critic, and sometimes he's completely mute, and the fun part of writing emerges instead.
Well said George. Im a bit brain dead from cat nursing but will try and think of anything fun to say. Definitely approaching it with Love is a good way to go, the more fearful you are the more you will take rather than give to it. I mean take the risky bits which could be where some love lies.
I was trying to find a thing I wrote about writing which ended with ‘Make Aliens eyes glisten’,
Your work is like anything, a baby, a puppy, it might be a baby genius or a feral puppy. If you can keep approaching it in a calm assertive way with positivity and an expectation that you will have a bit of fun and it will be good, it will do what you want because it wants to please you.
All you have to do is relax so it’s not getting mixed signals. And sometimes I do a quick run where I put a dot of colour next to any bits I love.
That’s interesting. Sometimes I’ve edited myself into having hardly any of those bits left.
Some of my favourite films are almost plotless, but full of bits I love.
Write down what you love, fast, ten words, what you want people to feel, can you help the world in any tiny way ?
I loved the word George used -console, thats beautiful. Or maybe he meant his console.
Try to find something that inspires you and breathe it in and approach an edit, which could be adding points as well as cutting swathes, with the same gerousity of spirit and tenderness toward your characters.
I’m rambling waiting on results of cat tests. Good luck
Another Office Hours Q&A where George has simply floored me. I am always on the lookout for examples in life where the spirit of a thing, the embedded, intended lovingness, surpasses the technique. I think this is the realm of art. It is, as George has so aptly titled this post, about the flavor of things. And I find it here in Story Club so frequently that I am amazed.
Today, amongst George’s thoughts about revisions, and editing, and drafts, and when to print out, we come to this, an absolute gift: “The way we ought to feel, according to me: “I am in this dream called life, living it, sometimes feeling trapped in it, sometimes feeling blessed to be in it, and I want – well, I want to leave something lovely behind, for those who will follow me (and for those who are out there in it with me right now), something that, through its complicated beauty, will bear testimony to how crazy and intense and nice it was being here. I hope to reassure and console with this work. (But not falsely.)”
And I, sitting here on my couch, am unable to read much further due to the tears welling up in my eyes….mic drop….walk away….with awe and gratitude. Thank you so much George and thank you questioner for initiating this.
Very helpful post. I'm revising a book-length non-fiction ms right now, and I'm making myself miserable. I don't think I'm doing the book much good either.
The thing has been accepted for publication, and I have a number of (anonymous) readers' comments to contend with. I'm getting a little better about those: "No, that's not the kind of book I'm trying to write." "Yeah, I could go down this alley, but it would take the argument too far off its path." "Oh, you're right; this isn't clear at all."
But I've been working on this project for several decades, and the most painful thing about the process of revision is the realization that I'm not as sharp as I used to be. (I'm in my mid-70s.) I'm trying hard to worry less about that, and even to think more about what age has brought me other than losing my cognitive edge. Not wisdom, exactly, but more concern for my reader? More sense of sentence-by-sentence style? Hard to say; I'll keep thinking about it.
Thanks to the community here for the chance to get this off my chest. It would be hard to talk about with people who know me. And I'm going to be thinking more about partnership with my book and throwing a party. And tomorrow I'm going to print, print, print, and then read straight through. Yes!
Great post, George, and yes, it's "Lincoln in the Bardo". R.I.P. Alexei Navalny, a brave man.
I'm wondering, questioner, if this isn't a case of your just having gotten a bit ahead of yourself. By which I mean that you're fine-tooth editing when you don't have enough story available to edit, that you haven't found the story yet & so can't revise---or edit, though I think revising and editing are two different, though closely related, activities---something that doesn't wholly exist yet. Anyway, this happens to me sometimes, this picking apart, line by line, word by word as you describe it. When it does it's usually a signal that I'm avoiding, for whatever anxious reason, finding the story: I have to write the story but I don't know what the story is yet. When I catch myself at this, I stop making sentences, serviceable sentences, perfect sentences or anything in between. Instead, I switch to scribbling (usually by hand because I believe writing has a physicality to it that the keyboard doesn't quite honor in the story-finding phase) notes to myself, words or phrases, that might point me in the direction of the story. And I do this on cheap paper or index cards, and I use lots and lots of both. (I'm shameless in my use of paper!) Eventually, I find story. Or not. But what this jotting on cheap paper does, I've found, is that it takes the preciousness out of the process. I've lowered the stakes. Everything is more relaxed, more accessible. I'm no longer in pursuit of the perfect sentence. Now I'm looking for the story. Once I've found it, or at least have some grasp of it, then I can start making good sentences, one after the other, until they pile up & I finally have something to revise. I hope this helps.
The questioner mentions both "line editing" and "structural editing." To me, a writer needs to do the structural work first. I'm not certain what exactly this questioner means by "structural editing," but I'm going to assume it means revising the story's structure--moving parts around, deciding whether the story needs to be told chronologically, out of order, in fragments, in flashbacks, etc. But whatever is decided, that work needs to be done before any sentence work. I mean, it can be a total waste of time to fix five sentences in the opening paragraph only to realize later that, on a structural level, there is no need for the first paragraph at all. So, revise your structure to fit the story you want to tell. And then go into your sentences and cut, add, rewrite, until the sentences hold together in exactly the right way. They should sing--have a rhythm that is noticeable when read aloud. Have a voice. So maybe this is helpful, and maybe not. But I wish you luck with your story!
Oh, and I don't think Navalny wants to rest in peace, not for a minute. Not till the world changes.
Thanks for this post. It makes me feel a little less guilty about not thinking about my readers when I write and revise. I mostly just write for myself and revise based on my own feelings.
But this post makes me wonder how editors make their decisions, and how writers might learn from these decisions/processes, and yet diverge from them too. I'm thinking in particular of Raymond Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" and its initial draft, "Beginnings," as edited by Gordon Lish, with all the edits published in The New Yorker. That would be fun for this group to discuss on some future occasion. I read it recently, and it's still kicking around in my head.
The picture of Navalny reading ( with his son?) one of George's books. You can't write about that. Must be so gratifying for you George to see that. Thanks for posting it.
dear george,
thank you as always for your thoughtful words and beautiful ideas!
some of my favorite moments from this dispatch:
"Reality is reality and concepts are concepts: inadequate word-wrappings, generated out of need, always insufficient."
"The way we ought to feel, according to me: 'I am in this dream called life, living it, sometimes feeling trapped in it, sometimes feeling blessed to be in it, and I want – well, I want to leave something lovely behind, for those who will follow me (and for those who are out there in it with me right now), something that, through its complicated beauty, will bear testimony to how crazy and intense and nice it was being here. I hope to reassure and console with this work. (But not falsely.)'"
"Sometimes my ideas about my writing don’t work for me either"
thank you!
love
myq
‘I am trying to avoid mistakes rather than throw a good party.’ Brilliant. Sums up where I am at the moment. Thank you!
I’ve been struggling to get a story going. Imposed deadlines (I missed them), assigned edifying reading (they were dull), sat myself at the computer (did clothes shopping). I can spend days/weeks in this Puritan state, metaphorically wearing the drab rags of Serious Writer and slowly spiralling. Time is a gift and look how I’m wasting it and we’re all going to die some day so what *am* I doing with my life, really?
Then I remember I don’t need to atone to the God of Work Ethic. Remember that I think better after a walk. It was so desperate, a couple weeks back I took two long walks in one day. Two loads of sweaty clothes for the wash, but the ideas began flowing. I figured out what was stopping me from starting (muddy characters) and began reading for pleasure. Going for writers who were doing some of what I was missing; letting myself shelve the books again if I thought, ‘Thanks, Cervantes, but you’re not my guy right now’.
After two months of ‘Account for yourself!!’ two weeks of kindness has done me so much good. I knew this (I always know this, down deep) but the guilt to be accountable silenced the intuition to be kind. But it’s the kindness, at least for me, that relaxes my mind enough to think.
So glad to be here with Story Club. What a wonderful question and such a wonderful response that I want to remember, every day. The metaphor about letting your drafts breathe a bit and letting them be a bit lumpy instead of analytically auto piloting the hell out of them reminds me of instructions I’ve seen frequently for pancake batter. Stir it up but not too much. Another case of the Goldilocks zone, which also refers to those precious zones in the universe where life can occur.
Appreciated all of this, especially your observation that a writer must "be watchful for any hint that I might be involved in a downward neurotic spiral (DNS)." Made me laugh, because who hasn't been there with a manuscript? Beware the DNS! Also, that photo of Navalny was so moving. We were talking about his integrity and courage in my book club last week.
I love this question and George's response, so generous it makes me want to try and be more generous myself and share my process. I understand the sense of not moving forward with a story because each time we go to it we start at the beginning and spend whatever time we have write revising. I'm always doing this; it frustrates me. Something I've tried is to give myself permission to change the beginning pages for a few sessions, then go to my desk with the mentality 'OK, this may not be perfect, but it's better than it was, I'll let it slide for now, today I have to move on. My character is just lying around in limbo. I'd better release her. ' I'll read the pages I've already revised fast, slowing down as I approach new material time, I'll start changing the last para and go from there. I keep doing this until I have a full draft. I'll then let it sit for a week or so, don't look at it, maybe think about it when I walk the dog or paint a chair. I'll come back to revise all once. When it seems almost there, I'll read it fast every morning for a week, cutting or changing anything that stalls me as fast as I can. At this stage, I know the story and am looking for anything that irritates me or gets in the way. I think the frustration might serve a purpose at this point, I want to move on, chase another idea flitting by. I know when the story is done not because I think it's perfect ( I will never think it's perfect, and know this about myself) but when I can say I have done all I can, at this point, with this story I'll stop. I ask if I've been true to the story, if it's said what it wants to say and anything I do at this point would be my own fear trying to deny the story it's right to be. It seems no longer about me at this point, the story is it's own little being. And if later, I look at it and want to change it? That's OK, it's just the odd line. I changed the last lines of a story once after it had been published, years later (honestly, nobody minds.) The story in the collection wasn't exactly the same. It was better for it, but I can't beat myself up about not having those lines the first time. It had the benefit of distance and experience I didn't have at the time, and that's fine. Another thing I've tried is pulling myself out of revision mode by skipping ahead, writing a bit that will come later, even if I don't know how I'll get there yet. I'll write it fast. Realising I've just made something happen switches my mindset, from thinking all I do is ponder and ditch commas to boom, I wrote that, I'm a writer, and the decisions come faster. Revision suddenly becomes more focused, there's something in the distance I'm swimming towards. Hope that's helpful anyway (whenever I try to talk about writing my inner critic is like oh, here we go, who do you think you are?!)
An approach that has worked for me (modified recently by a metaphor George used, that his early drafts are like clay he's roughly shaping) is to allow myself to write badly, knowing that I can improve it a little with each revision.
It's not a foolproof approach -- my inner critic, personified here (https://www.journalofexpressivewriting.com/post/the-inner-critic-returns-from-the-dead), still rears its fearsome head -- but over many iterations, this permission-to-write-badly method has weakened that critic, and sometimes he's completely mute, and the fun part of writing emerges instead.
As for stopping what doesn't work, there's this from Bob Newhart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvujypVVBAY
Well said George. Im a bit brain dead from cat nursing but will try and think of anything fun to say. Definitely approaching it with Love is a good way to go, the more fearful you are the more you will take rather than give to it. I mean take the risky bits which could be where some love lies.
I was trying to find a thing I wrote about writing which ended with ‘Make Aliens eyes glisten’,
Your work is like anything, a baby, a puppy, it might be a baby genius or a feral puppy. If you can keep approaching it in a calm assertive way with positivity and an expectation that you will have a bit of fun and it will be good, it will do what you want because it wants to please you.
All you have to do is relax so it’s not getting mixed signals. And sometimes I do a quick run where I put a dot of colour next to any bits I love.
That’s interesting. Sometimes I’ve edited myself into having hardly any of those bits left.
Some of my favourite films are almost plotless, but full of bits I love.
Write down what you love, fast, ten words, what you want people to feel, can you help the world in any tiny way ?
I loved the word George used -console, thats beautiful. Or maybe he meant his console.
Try to find something that inspires you and breathe it in and approach an edit, which could be adding points as well as cutting swathes, with the same gerousity of spirit and tenderness toward your characters.
I’m rambling waiting on results of cat tests. Good luck