The Magic of the Rough Draft

I love the art of revision, but revising itself is hard – you’re trying to get right down into the true, beating  heart of the story, or the novel, or the poem, and it’s not always easy. I think of revision as where the real labor starts. Also, when I start revising a piece of writing, I know I’m getting ready to let it go, to have somebody else read it over, and ultimately –  send it out there into the world. It’s a strange process to pour weeks and months and even years of your life into a piece of writing you really care about, to give it as much beauty and strength as you can, to give it bravado or regret or pathos  or whatever it needs - and realize at the same time, its job is to move away from you, to have its own life.

---

I used to talk this over with Ann, my publisher in Baltimore. She‘d sometimes say  look – why don’t you open your  filing cabinets and just look down at all the rough drafts?  I guess to re-kindle –as it were – that initial rush of energy that comes when you first begin a piece of work. I have to confess that I’ve done this. I stand there and pick up a draft and I wonder what I’m looking for – there are all those marks and cross –outs,  (I write by pen, still), and odd inscriptions and arrows going up and down, and something that looks like a code – half the time I don’t know what it is,  but there’s something about it that’s grounding, something inexplicable  that gets fired in some powerful way that is deeply healing. And one day  - after a lot of work - it becomes a real piece of writing, it has a voice and a vision,  it has a shape and a reason, and an energy field all its own. There’s magic in a rough draft. Maybe that’s why I stand over the filing cabinets. I need that magic…