Saturday, January 28, 2012

The Joys of Revision Part 1


Teaching 7th and 8th graders how to write is lot different than being in an MFA creative writing program. One is the raw stuff of literacy, the rudimentary. The other is an exercise in sculpting art.  At work I spend a lot of time teaching children to think, speak, and write in sentences. Punctuation is a big part of my day. Periods and commas, capitals and quotes. Commas, yes. You teach commas to a 12 year old boy who only wants to be wrestling his friend to the floor. Highly literate and mature girls are also among my students. They enjoy writing and crafting meaningful work, and they care about how commas are used.
Bu no matter the writing ability, it seems the same problems persist in revising our rough drafts. When do we focus on organization and ideas, versus when do we edit for conventions and sentence craft?
The“writing process” model taught in schools emphasizes revision first, as if the student will simply shuffle around sentences, delete repetitions, and describe in more detail. The more advanced my student, the more possible it is for them to jump into this task. But if your sentences are gobbledy-gook, running on, fragmented, confused, you’ve got to fix them first. Your thoughts must be complete and comprehensible before they can be organized.
Some children will show me lengthy paragraphs with nary a period in sight. Or words so creatively spelled, or spell-checked, that we must correct. The more struggling the writer, the more important it is to edit first.
And what of myself? One might think, oh, she’s an educated person, an English teacher in possession of one Master’s Degree already. Surely her sentences are fine. After the initial copy editing, I should be ready to revise, re-organize, shape my essays into their long awaited form.
But if I’ve learned anything from the MFA program or my students, it’s that my word and sentence craft always needs work. Is my language concrete? Verbs active? Nouns specific? Are all my commas well placed or even necessary? Has the sentence lost its meaning in a rambling clause, or been overloaded with images? Or perhaps I’ve indulgently overused adjectives and ridiculously descriptive adverbs.
To what end does the careful sentence and word work illuminate the structure and the meaning of the written work? No doubt the more polished my writing is, the easier it is to work on structure and explore meaning.
Sometimes I sit down at a draft revision and I don’t know where or how to start making changes. So I begin at the beginning. I read and listen to each word, each sentence, attempting to craft for clarity, beauty, and meaning. Through this careful sentence and work word, ideas may spring, organizational problems may resolve, connections not seen will be brought to light.
Revise/edit, edit/revise. In the spiralic process of writing, I can’t always keep track. For me the revision/editing process is the opportunity to fall in love in with my own words, again and again.
I’m wondering how it works for other writers, teachers, and students. Feel free to share your thoughts on the process.
Next week, Joys of Revision 2!

Monday, January 23, 2012

Getting started


“A MINOR TRIUMPH > getting our tent packed up this a.m. in the time btwn rain showers – mostly dry.” I found these words written in a journal and recalled the rainy June days on the Kougarok River, 70 miles north of Nome, when I wrote this. Storm clouds circulated around the horizon watering us on and off with a chilly rain, then a break, cool breezes, a shot of sun if we were lucky. Timing the campsite pack-up was straightforward: the rain ceased and a breeze dried out the tent. Those dark, wet clouds across the river? Be here in about 20 minutes. Pack up now.

Wasn’t my own pursuit of creative writing a series of minor triumphs? Carving out the time to write and the time to read books? Or crafting a beautiful sentence, wrestling control of an overzealous “I”, or meeting a manuscript deadline. Okay, meeting deadlines feels more like a major triumph, but in the scheme of things, it probably isn’t.

It’s not that the storm clouds of doubt and job-demands circulate on my life’s horizon, and I must somehow snatch those rare moments of good weather to get things done. (I know, cheesy metaphor.)

No, these minor triumphs, which hopefully will string together and into the major triumph of completing an MFA degree, are satisfying, nourishing moments of clarity, insight, inspiration, and happiness at my own good foresight and fortune.

I hope you’ll join me.