Earlier this week, I cleared out my old blog I started in 2010 that I had been using to host my illustrations, writings, and general swathe of nonsense on a public internet space. Y’know, like a damn fool. But that was eight years ago. I was thirteen years old, convinced my thoughts and creations came out as good then as they would ever be. Yikes. More than 80,000 posts went bye-bye and although I felt a little sad immediately afterwards, ultimately a great weight had been lifted. My new blog went up, with some salvaged content from the old one, on Friday.
Revision in action! (You know how when you’re a cranky teenager learning math and you’re constantly wondering when and how you will ever use the quadratic formula in the real life? This is the English equivalent of that.)
Thinking about that after spending some time with these readings was interesting; obviously the context of a blog written over the course of years and years is a bit different than revision in the sense that Harris talks about, but I actually see a stark difference in the way I ran that blog than I do the way I write my papers. Ideas were never fully realized and I never expected to return to them once they were written down, so my writings were rambling and wrought with errors. A horrid final product, perhaps, but I understand this is how most people begin the writing process.
I identify heavily as a one-draft writer. I don’t think I can honestly recall one instance where I voluntarily revised a piece of my own writing extensively; only in the context of an assignment. I say this with a grain of salt, but if I honestly thought there was something in a paper that should have been changed or improved, I would’nt have turned that in. But through these readings was also my introduction to the process of internal revision; the idea that writing remains a discovery, but the more ideas are mentally edited to align with the intention of the author, the less the author feels like they need to be changed, improved, or perfected when the sentence is written.
There is, however, the matter of growing older. As with my blog, I am convinced that anything I try my best to write at any given time will, by default, be the best thing I can possibly write at that given time. I type and delete in real time, edit and cut before words even make it on to the page. Strange enough, the more time passes, the more I learn, the more my tastes change, the more I understand why revision is worthwhile.
Hi Casey, thanks for your post. It must have taken some hefty courage, or something, to pull the trigger on ridding yourself of that old blog content. Someone would have to fire a couple rounds upon my heels to get me to accede in ridding myself of digital files from when I was young. Personally, I've a lot of cloud uploading to perform from my first laptop (a boat anchor) to the rest in-between.
ReplyDeleteIt's cool that you're finding revision more worthwhile as time passes. Your (mostly) one draft approach/ style is interesting to think about. Have you ever completely started-over when you didn't like something you'd written? Do you think there are pieces of your past writings that could be improved with a fresh-eyed view and trying a new approach? I find that some of my older pieces need to be updated as time marches on. One of the cool things about revision for me is taking a critical look at my work that I've let rest a while, and finding all kinds of great ways in which it can be improved, even if I was really happy with it the last time I saw it. I believe time and distance allows us a better ability to accurately assess and critique our own work. Most things become better with a dab of fresh revision especially if little revision was initially lent to a piece. In what ways have your tastes changed the way you understand revision?
P.s. I had a similar appearance issue with my pasted post a few weeks back. I fixed it by pasting the work in a Bb draft window (any will do), then re-highlighted and clicked the "remove formatting" button in the top-right-ish area, then re-highlight and pasted into Blogger and it was white :-)
As I was reading about your approach to your old blog, I thought to myself that this is really about genre. As you put it, a blog is a piece of writing that is never "full realized," and it's episodic--you put up what you are thinking at the moment, assuming it won't be revisited. One draft writing seems logical for a genre like that. But I was also fascinated that you've been a one-draft writer in many other writing genres as well. I don't know, but I suspect that it's a habit you've developed because it's largely successful for you. The one-drafters in the Harris study seemed pretty happy with the approach, too. But you're right, I think, to flag "internal revision" as something that you can forfeit with that approach. I've approached may writing projects with discovery as a main motive. I find getting down what I already know less interesting, though I certainly do it a lot. I also often write in a genre--the personal essay--that emphasizes discovery. But I'm currently working on an academic article, and the revisions seems absolutely endless (it's been going on for a year), and it's been an incredible learning experience. For me, revision works from the premise that your first look at something typically helps you to see what is most obvious. Looking, and looking again, and sometimes again, yields the most insight, the most surprises, the most learning. That's why I'm a multi-drafter.
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