When to stop revising … plus a Veterans Day message

One of the thorny questions a writer contends with is how to know when a work is finished. Revision is essential to good writing, but when is enough enough and how can you tell? Theoretically, revision could go on forever, but it has to end eventually or nothing would ever be published. Perhaps that point is reached when the writer finally throws his or her hands up in the air? As French poet Paul Valery famously remarked, “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.”

The whole question can seem ridiculous, and American poet Billy Collins penned a satiric poem, “January in Paris,” using Valery’s quote as a starting point. Collins writes:

I would see the poems of Valery,

the ones he never finished but abandoned,

wandering the streets of the city half clothed.

Most of them needed only a final line

or two, a little verbal flourish at the end,

but whenever I approached,

they would retreat from their makeshift fires

into the shadows -- thin specters of incompletion,

forsaken for so many long decades

how could they ever trust another man with a pen?

With my own writing, when I start to change words and then change them back again, I figure I’m getting close to being done. In general, I find that my first drafts are wordy and ridden of clichés. Then I tend to over-explain (a bad habit among teachers) in my second draft, which actually lengthens my already overwritten draft. Finally, in the third draft, I start to tackle the formidable job of cutting and pruning.

I fervently believe in revision. I’ve always doubted the Wordsworthian assertion that accomplished writing springs from “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” preferring to believe that writing is a craft that rewards the hard labor of revision. Accomplished writing springs from a lot of practice -- the same as accomplished singing, carpentry, baseball playing, you name it.

As yesterday was Veterans Day, I am reminded of a poem I wrote earlier this year as a tribute to SFC Dan Murphy (U.S. Army-Retired), an old friend and fellow former soldier who died after battling a long illness. I wrote the poem below in a surge of emotion the morning after Murph died. Then I started to revise it, but I soon stopped, believing that tinkering too much with the poem would ruin its emotional intensity and honesty. Here is the poem; you can judge for yourself:

Lay Down Your Rifle: A Poem in Memory of SFC Dan Murphy, Boys from Leeds, RIP May 28, 2014

Lay down your rifle, old friend,

This you have earned, your eternal rest,

And we who followed you in war or peace are left behind,

We who knew you and loved you best.

You’ve gone away on that final dawn patrol,

A ghost in the shadows no foe can see,

No pain can touch you, no weakness, nor fear.

Take this soldier’s moment to be free.

Until that day when we too shall cross the river

And slip into the trees, and rally again on some distant shore,

Lean back on your rucksack, rest at ease old friend,

But hold your ground, and stay free forevermore.

-- written by John R. (Bob) Dial, former SSG, 1-105 Infantry, 27th Brigade, 10th Mountain Division (L.I.), May 29, 2014

It’s not a perfect poem, and sophisticated critics would probably ridicule it as doggerel, but I still believe that it is complete and finished. The poem also reminds me that our freedom to write and express ourselves would not exist without the sacrifice of so many soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Happy Veterans Day to all veterans. We must never abandon them.

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.

Let some air out of those gasbag expressions!

Source: Wikimedia Commons public domain
photo (with text added by the author).

The sting from some cutting remarks scribbled on your papers by teachers of yore can last a lifetime. For example, I’ll never forget the venomous response my use of the pompous phrase “So I say” (as a lead-in to one of my conclusions) elicited from my high school English teacher. Needless to say, until this very moment, I had never written “So I say” again in my life.

Likewise, I often cross out “I believe” (as well as "My opinion is that...") in student papers. Though “I believe” is certainly less pretentious-sounding than “So I say,” it is nevertheless redundant. If you are writing a paper and asserting your beliefs, then there is seldom any reason to write “I believe” in it. After all, we know it’s what you believe because you’re the one writing it. Just say it!

Now quick, puncture those gasbag expressions and let the wind out before your prose explodes!

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.

Get rid of clutter -- don’t be a word hoarder!

Source: Wikimedia Commons public domain photo

You’ve probably seen the reality TV series “Hoarders: Buried Alive,” which shows the unseemly lifestyles of people compulsively unable to part with any of their material possessions. Well, like apartments and houses, sentences and paragraphs and essays can also become cluttered with too much stuff -- in this case, unnecessary words and phrases.

Revision, the process at the heart of all good writing, is largely about deciding to eliminate words and unnecessary material -- the same way a butcher trims fat from a prime cut of beef. Some of these decisions are easy and others difficult. Getting rid of unnecessary words contained in empty expressions and wordy constructions is easy. For example, as a journalism student I was taught never to use the phrase “the fact that,” which can often be replaced with simply “that.” Much worse was “due to the fact that,” a cumbersome phrase that even today makes me break out in hives. “We went to the store due to the fact that we needed some bread” can always be shortened to “We went to the store because we needed some bread.” One word instead of five is always a bargain. Never write “due to the fact that.”

Other cuts can be more painful, however. These are the beautiful, polished little gems (phrases, sentences, and sometimes whole paragraphs) that just don’t fit in with the topic or focus of your essay. We love them because they are so clever. Creative writing teachers have a blunt slogan to describe the act of cutting these precious statements. They say you have to “murder your darlings.” Anything that interferes with clarity and communication, no matter how lovely, must go. Those are the tough cuts to swallow, but swallow them we must.

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.

Stuff it in your desk drawer!

Source: photo taken by the author.

How can you tell if something you've written has real staying power and lasting value? Perhaps you've heard writers talk about the fabled “desk drawer.” If given the luxury of time, writers can set aside their early drafts (by, for example, putting them in a desk drawer) and then pull them out months -- maybe even years -- later to look at them with “fresh eyes” for revision. Basically, the extended time away turns you into a different reader than you were while writing the first draft, and you are sure to identify areas for improvement that you overlooked in the heat of first-draft creation. Of course, a daily newspaper writer on deadline does not enjoy this luxury of time (even less today, in the era of 24-hour internet news). Nor, certainly, does a student scratching out an essay within a time limit for a “writing on demand” standardized test.

This “desk drawer” theory applies to reading as well as writing. Spending “time away” from a book and then re-reading it will tell you whether or not it’s a worthy book. Should you find yourself later in life re-reading a book you either loved or hated in school, you will sometimes discover you now hold the opposite of your former opinion about it. That’s not because the book has changed, but because you have. A substantial chunk of life experience has made you a different person … and a different reader. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus put it, we never step in the same river twice. The current has irrevocably changed the river just as time has altered us.

Sometimes, however, a book holds up and continues to impress us throughout the stages of our life. These books are the keepers. For example, when I was a teenager, my brother-in-law left an old copy of the science magazine Omni at our family home. Bored one day, I picked it up to read and was drawn into the novella “Sandkings” by George R.R. Martin (probably due to an accompanying illustration). I recall tearing through the pages of this gripping science fiction/horror tale, completely unable to stop reading. Years later, I stumbled across the same story -- now out of print -- in an anthology of award-winning science fiction tales. Re-reading Martin’s story as an adult, I was still captivated. Today, using a battered photocopy, I teach “Sandkings” at the start of every school year as a “can’t miss” story. Even the most reluctant readers will be swept up by its suspense and startling imagery. “Sandkings” is a little known masterpiece of suspense, pacing, structure, foreshadowing, and establishing mood.

As a young man, I read with keen interest the nonfiction book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer upon its first publication. About ten years later, when I made a mid-career change into teaching, I re-read the book with an eye toward making it a summer-reading assignment, and I thought, “Wow, this is still an awesome book.” Ten years after that, I re-read it yet again as I considered adding it to my regular 11th-grade curriculum, and I thought, “WOW, this is STILL an awesome book!” Across a span of 20 years, from age 30 to 50, Into the Wild has continued to have a profound impact on me. As it does also on the teenagers I teach. Whether they consider Chris McCandless to be a dreamy impractical fool, or a profound transcendental thinker, or something in between, few of my students are apathetic about his portrayal in the book.

So remember, whether you’re writing or reading, if you want to find the really good stuff, give it some time!

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.

Translating your thoughts into words

Source: photo taken by author.

Frequently, when I conduct a one-on-one writing conference with a student, we will discuss the difficulty in translating the seemingly clear thoughts in the student’s mind into lucid prose on the page. "I have a problem doing that," students will tell me. My customary response to that statement is something like ... "You, me and every other writer who has ever lived has the same problem. Including the professionals." The problem with comparing our own writing against the output of professional writers is that generally we are looking at an embryonic draft of our own writing but comparing it to a published version of the professional’s. The Great Gatsby did not spring word-for-word from the pen of F. Scott Fitzgerald into the letter-perfect copy of that novel with its classic art-deco cover that we are so familiar with from bookstore shelves. No doubt, Fitzgerald labored through multiple drafts to shape his novel into the finished form we see today. We just aren’t privy to that process and so can easily become discouraged with our own ongoing efforts. But Fitzgerald and every other writer who ever lived endured the same process. The principal advantage the pros have over student writers is speed (from experience). By repeated practice they have become more adept at rapidly transforming a clumsy, vague first draft into a cogent, clear final draft. And, also with experience, the first drafts of professional writers become more accomplished (but never finished or perfect), so they start revising from an elevated position. Remember, it's not a matter of intelligence but of experience, so get busy practicing!

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.

A first draft, not a rough one

"There shouldn't be anything rough about a first draft," I once heard a professor say. “It should be as perfect as you can make it.” Like that wise professor, I too do not care for the term "rough draft" but prefer "first draft." Why? Because the “rough” first draft is the one you write only for yourself. You’re telling yourself a story or explaining an argument to yourself. But the REAL first draft you hand in for evaluation should have been written for an audience (albeit an audience of one: your professor).

Bestselling horror writer Stephen King describes an apt metaphor for this process in his excellent (but unfortunately titled) book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. King’s book is a lapel-grabbing narrative about writing and the author’s apprenticeship as a writer, but (in my estimation) the ho-hum title makes it sound like a dreary textbook. At any rate, King relates an anecdote in which a veteran newspaper editor gives writing advice to King, a schoolboy intern for the paper.

King paraphrases this wily editor as saying:

[W]rite with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right -- as right as you can, anyway -- it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.

In other words, revision brings the audience into consideration. So the “first” draft you hand in to your instructor (assuming you have a teacher or professor enlightened enough about the writing process to require multiple drafts) is not the first time you’ve written it. Instead, it should be the “door open” first draft written with an eye toward the reader, not the “door closed” draft written just for you, the writer. Remember, handing in a paper to your teacher is in reality a form of publication, so open the door!

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.