Re-Imagining Approaches to Revision

Dear Friends,

Revision has been on my mind lately. I seem to always be collecting what writers have said about the process, which is part intuition and part acumen, part artistry and part muscle.

In CWC, we recently had an exceptional class on revision led by Laure-Anne Bosselaar, who guided us through a series of lenses or filters for both deepening and refining a draft. You can watch the replay in the CWC portal here.

Today, though, I wanted to share some of my favorite observations on revision and, for my paid subscribers, offer a replay of a past class on reimagining our approaches to the process. If you, too, find yourself in a revision-focused phase of your writing life, I hope these practices prove useful.

xM

Poets on Revision:

“The energy of revision is the energy of creation and change, which is also the energy of destruction.”

— Maggie Anderson

“Revision teaches me how to push beyond the choices that come easily. It restrains me, challenges me, forces me back and back and back again to my failures. Process saves me from the poverty of my intentions.”

— Traci Brimhall

“The poets who influenced me most were Yeats and Valéry. Both were poets who revised endlessly, and I believe in revision. But I think you can only do it when you’re inspired. In other words, the poem goes dead if you don’t revise it white heat. You can’t revise it cold, as far as I’m concerned. It’s like playing a very stiff three sets of tennis one after another.”

— May Sarton

“Revision is to occupy a poem as spectator instead of as creator. We clean a room so that it looks unoccupied; in revision we work to efface affect, idiosyncrasy and error so that the poem is a hotel room with the sheets turned down, a mint on its pillow.”

— Carmen Giménez Smith

Below, please find my two-hour revision intensive organized around three exercises that are designed to help you re-enter any draft you’re stuck on. Enjoy!