|
First step in thorough revising: if this piece is intended for an audience, get your readers and purpose clearly in mind. Just as with quick revising or any revising, you must now keep your audience and purpose clearly in mind, especially if you allowed yourself to ignore them while you were getting words on paper. There is no such thing as good-writing-in-general. You must make it good for this purpose with this audience.Next, read over what you've written and mark the important bits (just as in quick revising).Next, find your main point or center of gravity. This is the same step as in quick revising, but this time you don't take No for an answer as you sometimes had to do when you were revising in a hurry. Sometimes, of course, you knew precisely what your main point or focus was even before you started writing: the whole reason for sitting down to write in the first place was to focus on exactly that one thing which you had already formulated in your head. (But don't hold too tenaciously to it. The process of writing will often lead you to better things.)But if you haven't found your main point during the writing process, now you must demand it.
First step in thorough revising: if this piece is intended for an audience, get your readers and purpose clearly in mind. Just as with quick revising or any revising, you must now keep your audience and purpose clearly in mind, especially if you allowed yourself to ignore them while you were getting words on paper. There is no such thing as good-writing-in-general. You must make it good for this purpose with this audience.Next, read over what you've written and mark the important bits (just as in quick revising).Next, find your main point or center of gravity. This is the same step as in quick revising, but this time you don't take No for an answer as you sometimes had to do when you were revising in a hurry. Sometimes, of course, you knew precisely what your main point or focus was even before you started writing: the whole reason for sitting down to write in the first place was to focus on exactly that one thing which you had already formulated in your head. (But don't hold too tenaciously to it. The process of writing will often lead you to better things.)But if you haven't found your main point during the writing process, now you must demand it. This is often a crucial, delicate, frustrating process. You have lots of good stuff, but as you turn it over and over, you can't find the center, the main point, the one thing that sums it all up. You are trying to wrestle a powerful snake into a bottle. It writhes and writhes and you can't get control over it. You have two main options, putting it aside and wrestling some more.Putting it aside for a couple of days is easiest and best. The main point will often come perfectly clear to you all by itself, as you are walking around doing something entirely different or else when you sit down again after your vacation. Your mind will chew on the problem by itself while you are supposedly ignoring it. But if that doesn't work, you'll just have to wrestle some more with that snake. Indeed, you probably get the most benefit from a vacation if you wrestle a bit first to get the problem fully permeated into your mind for your unconscious to work on it.Here are the ways of wrestling that I have found most useful. | • | Arrange the good bits in the order that makes most sense. That helps you see where they are coming from or trying to go. | | • | Think some more about who will read these words. You're not looking for some main point in general but the best emphasis for getting through to those readers. | | • | Summarize each of the good bits in one sentence (or in two or three sentences if there are two or three separate points in one passage). By making each point assert something in a full sentence with a verb, you clarify half-thought ideas. If you put | | | these sentences then into a logical order you will almost invariably find your main point. | | | • | Do more raw writing. Abandon the detached consciousness of critical revising and plunge back into uncritical, involved writing. This new burst of unworried words, after you have been wrestling, helps you find that main idea. | | | • | Last resort. If you still can't find the main point, make a "false" main point. Distort or oversimplify what you are saying and force as many of your points as possible into a slightly wrong focus that is easier to find than the right one you are seeking. Or adopt the opposite point of view and quickly make up an outline of assertions in support of it. Summing things up into this simpler or distorted or dead-wrong point of view will often produce the idea you have been looking for. | | | • | And of course another vacation is always a good idea if wrestling doesn't go well. | | | | | |
Next, put your parts in order on the basis of your main idea. If the pieces don't fall easily into an obvious order you must make an outline that consists of full-sentence assertions: find each idea in your best bits of raw writing, force yourself to summarize it in a sentence that asserts something, then put those sentences into the order that tells the most coherent story. (Of course there are likely to be gaps you must fill in to make a coherent story.) Next, make a draft. Using your outline as a blueprint, write out a rough draft of the whole thing. You may be able to use large chunks of your original writing. Scissors and a paste can carry you a long way (if you were smart enough to write on only one side of the paper). But often you must write lots out new.The goal, however, isn't perfect, clear, graceful language. I, at least, fare better if I just try to get my thoughts said and don't worry too much about awkwardness, repetition, roundaboutness -- even imprecision -- at this stage. There are all these decisions I must make as I write a draft: can I use this favorite word again here? does this distinction belong here or later? which of two similar words is the right one? These decisions are always easier to make after I have written out a draft of the whole thing. (The general principle here is to bring the whole piece along gradually: don't polish any particular section very much more than any other, since final decisions here always depend on final decisions there. It feels like keeping lots of balls in the air at once, but it's easier in the long run.) Possible detour: deal with a mess. This is a stage in revising when you have to be ready for a mess. Perhaps just a minor mess. For example, as you write out sentences they tug against the structure you have carefully worked out. Perhaps you are writing out the third idea in your list of assertions, but it keeps grabbing the reins out of your hands and leading to the seventh assertion instead of the fourth one. Three-to-four seems so logical in an outline, but three-to-seven feels unavoidable as the words themselves flow into sentences. The question is whether the writing-out has led you to a better order or whether you should resist that tug and force the sentences to follow the original organization. To make up your mind you need perspective and taking a break is probably the best way to get it. Often, in fact, it doesn't much matter which way to go, but you need new perspective to see that clearly. But sometimes it's a major mess, or at least it threatens to be one: not just a possible minor shifting of points but a major coming apart. Perhaps you have to change your mind about what you thought you were saying. Here's how it's apt to happen. You know your main point and your organizing shape and you are writing out a draft, but now in mid-stride, as you are explaining some small detail or bringing in some small illustration you hadn't thought of before, suddenly that detail turns into a land mine and blows up your whole draft in your hands. You've stumbled onto a specific case that seems to deny or disprove your main idea. Or perhaps as you are arguing some point you try to think of what an opponent might say -- as you should -- and suddenly you think of an opposing argument that you cannot answer. This is the most discouraging moment in expository or conceptual writing. It helps to realize not only that this kind of thing is common in writing, but that, despite how you feel right now, something good just happened to you. For this is how new and better ideas arrive. They don't come out of the blue. They come from noticing difficulties with what you believed, small details or particular cases that don't fit what otherwise feels right. The mark of the person who can actually make progress in thinking -- who can sit down at 8:30 with one set of ideas and stand up at 11 with better ideas -- is a willingness to notice and listen to these inconvenient little details, these annoying loose ends, these embarrassments or puzzles, instead of impatiently sweeping them under the rug. A good new idea looks obvious and inevitable after it is all worked out and the dust has settled, but in the beginning it just feels annoying and the wrong old idea feels persuasively correct.So when you first stumble onto this difficulty as you are engaged in writing out a draft, you don't know whether it is just an unimportant exception or whether it is trying to lead you to a new better view of things. You've struggled to work out your thinking and your organization and now this pesky detail calls it into question but gives you nothing to replace it with. You have nothing but a doubt, a difficulty, and some bent edges where you tried to force this puzzle piece into the only available opening.It's at this point you have to make a decision. If you don't have the time or willingness to let things really come apart, then you'd better retreat and save this interesting dilemma till later. Since you can't make the puzzle piece fit your structure, you must somehow sweep it under the rug or put it in your pocket and hope no one notices. Distract your reader away from the unfilled hole to other issues. You can hope that your original idea and structure are in fact right and that this (now pocketed) detail only looks like an exception.But if you are willing to follow this unravelling thread where it leads, you have to put aside everything you have already done. The most useful tactic at this point is usually to plunge into new, open, unworried writing: to think on paper and let this difficulty or seed of doubt grow. Follow new thoughts where they lead; plunge deeper into the forest of confusion. Here, in my experience, are the outcomes you can expect: | • | Your new exploration may lead you quickly to a happy ending. You discover how to explain this apparent contradiction, and happily your main idea and original structure remain solid -indeed strengthened. The apparent contradiction may be unimportant and not worth mentioning or it may be very helpful to you as a vivid detail to illustrate your main idea. | | • | But sometimes this exception or anomaly, when you really let yourself explore it in a burst of new writing, leads you to a genuinely new idea or new way of looking at everything you have been saying. Perhaps your old idea is all wrong and must be scrapped altogether. | | • | Sometimes you go through an interesting change. First you see your new idea as right and your old idea as wrong, and you | | | immerse yourself in all the implications of the new idea. But then gradually you come around to see how' the old "wrong" idea is nevertheless right in a sense or in certain cases. For now you see it through new eyes and you can explain it more fruitfully as a sub-case of your new idea. |
| | • | The most frustrating outcome is when you pursue your contradiction farther and farther into the woods and you just get more and more lost. You are left entirely stuck. You have lost your faith in your original idea, but you haven't figured out anything coherent or complete to replace it with. In the long run this is a happy state of affairs: you are likely to be on to something important, you are charting new territory, this is the best kind of thinking -- the kind that makes you smart and creative. But for the moment, you are stuck. The most effective way to deal with this frustrating case is of course to take a break. Put your writing away and forget about it for more than a day or two. You should be doing this periodically throughout revising. But there is another tactic that also helps: stop trying to solve the dilemma and simply accept it and describe it. Stop beating your head against the wall, stop pushing so hard against an immovable object, take the pressure off your shoulders. Pretend that things are just fine as they stand now, in their state of contradiction or confusion, and describe the conflicting details or ideas as accurately and happily as you can. This will often lead to new perspective and a solution. | | | | | |
Of course you don't always have to take this detour through a mess. Most of the time you just write out your new draft as planned. I could make my story simpler by ignoring this occasional problem. But when the mess lands on you, you badly need assurance and help. And I suggest you be tolerant or even welcoming toward this whole process of things coming apart in your hands after you thought you had them all organized. It is the most trust- worthy way to create new ideas. If these messes never happen to you, perhaps you are not listening sympathetically enough for pesky examples and contrary arguments. At the end of this messy detour you may have to begin the revising process over again: mark the good bits, find your main point, make an outline, and write it out. But usually, once you have really thought through your reconceptualization, you can make adjustments to your draft without too much discomfort. These detours reflect the fact that in any serious or difficult piece of writing you must sometimes move back and forth between getting words on paper and revising. Sometimes the producing process is given some focus by standing back and trying to revise and shape and make sense of things; and sometimes the revising process is perked up by a new immersion into the creative process of writing quickly -- perhaps even writing off into an unknown direction. |