Re-Visioning: Let it Be (Part 3)

Alright, you've made those exquisite first tracks across the snowy page. You've slept by the campfire of your imagination and dreamed of excellence and perfection. Ancients whispered to you of genius in the night. But now, in the harsh light of a new day, you look at what you've created with a sense of horror. "Good Lord! I did that? My 8 year old nephew could write better than that!"

Take it easy. Things always look different under a bright light. Approach your work with respect and a certain amount of caution. You are changing outfits, becoming a surgeon where a mad artistic genius worked mere hours ago. It's a tricky business. If you aren't careful, you will remove something vital, cutting the very life from your new creation.

The first thing you want to do is transfer the piece from its initial scribblings on the back of a napkin or whatever into a form someone (you) can read and recognize. If, like me, you have the tendency once a computer keyboard is under your fingertips to immediately begin to revise, let someone else type the original into the file for you. Trade them something--like donuts--if you must, but don't do it yourself if you can't help messing with it. At this point, you do not want to change a thing. Copy it into the computer exactly the way it is written on the page.

Once the piece is reproduced in its entirety, print it. Changing nothing about it; simply print it. It is now, in some ways, a finished piece of work. No matter whether it seems like crappy work or great work, it is a complete entity that can be held in the hand. Read it several times over. Don't even hold a pen while you do this. When you're done, you will know whether this piece is worth keeping or not.

Here is your first opportunity to see again (re-vision) what you did the first time. Immediately, certain phrases will jump off the page, standing out like a drag queen in a biker bar. This is either delightful or out of place. Really, if you do as I suggest up to this point, you will know whether this particular work is worth the time, effort and energy you need to put into it to shape it into a finished work of art. Force nothing. Remember, you've got a million of 'em.

If, at this point you realize that it will cost you too much life to re-work the poem or essay or whatever into something both you and others can appreciate, do NOT despair. Never discount the value of what you have accomplished thus far. You have kept your promise to the Muse to meet her at the appointed time with pen or paints in hand. No matter that you do not like what you have done, or don't find it worth more time, the Muse will remember that you were there and you did as you promised. You kept your date.

This faithfulness will pay off eventually. Honor the positive energy of art you have put out into a world that needs creative thinking and beauty. Respect yourself for having the passion and the grit to keep carving into the stone, creating records for an uncertain future. Some might call it crazy. I call it courage.

Next time, we will go into what to do if you like the piece and want to pick up your chisel and work on it, attempt to make it all it can be. Do not throw away what you have produced this time, however. Store it, save it in a file. Return to it later. There may be something hidden inside, a pearl in that ugly oyster, that will make the perfect necklace eventually. Save it and know the world was fed because you gave into the impulse to play a little God and create something from Scratch. Is that an oxymoron?

—Mendy Knott is a writer, poet and author of the collection A Little Lazarus (Half Acre Press, 2010). To order your copy of A Little Lazarus directly from the author, please click here.

Re-Visioning (Part 2)

"To sleep, perchance to dream"

—Hamlet's Soliloquy

No, we're not going to get into an analysis of Shakespeare's famous soliloquy. I simply want to use this quote to get my next point across, which is not about dying. I'm translating literally. Go to sleep. Have a dream. That is my best advice once the original, wild, passionate creative work is done.

Let's begin our revision with what may well look like the end. Go to sleep. Go to bed if you've written into the night. Take a nap if you worked until afternoon. Whatever you do, give yourself a chance to sleep on it before you ever begin to revise your work. That's right. After you've enjoyed your romp across the blank page and have built your jaunty snowman, which you now notice tends to lean to the left, rest awhile. Your perfect igloo seems to be melting in the bright light of the noonday sun. So leave the scene entirely – go for a walk in the snow, make some soup, sleep on it before you try to "fix it."

Two things happen while we sleep on our work. The mind rests and we are able to see the work fresh the next day. If we're lucky, we may even have a dream that opens a new door to our imagination, offering an insight we could not have come up with in the bright light of our original creative frenzy. And time passes. The value of the passage of time should not be underestimated. You don't want so much time to pass that you lose interest in your poem or project. You really don't want to start all over again because you don't recognize the work as the same beast with which you began. But you do need at least one night, maybe two, before you "go back in" and start to revise.

Time itself works on a piece. Change occurs like the weather. We can see more clearly the core of what we want to say, what we want to accomplish with the work. It's as if the outer layer full of sticks and grass has melted away, leaving us with what we really want to express. Use the tool of time; it's invaluable and it's free.

So the first thing you want to do once you've created a first draft, a zero draft (I call it a fun draft) is sleep on it. Don't touch it. Read it and enjoy it for what it is; a snow person or scarecrow with bits of flora and fauna attached, leaning slightly and already beginning to melt. Love its carrot nose, which is nothing original but still looks good. Stare into the steel gray stones you set into its face for eyes, and the old fishing rods you used for arms. Those seem original. But don't touch it until the next day. It will be there, waiting for you. If you still have energy left – well, shoot, start another one!

—Mendy Knott is a writer, poet and author of the collection A Little Lazarus (Half Acre Press, 2010). To order your copy of A Little Lazarus directly from the author, please click here.

Revision: The Beginning of the End—Part 1

Writing the first draft of any piece is easy for me. Some artists open the door of their creativity and freeze in front of the blank screen, white page or empty canvas like they've just stepped out into a blizzard without their boots and mittens. Not me.

I look out on that vast emptiness thrilled that I will be the first human to make fresh tracks in new snow. I leap forward. I dance out the door so full of ideas I leave prints criss-crossed and circling until sometimes it's hard to follow me. You know that cartoon "Family Circus," and the kid they trace with little dashes all the places he goes during his day, leaving a maze only he can retrace? That's me writing my first draft. I am happily lost in the wilderness of a freewrite, of not thinking, of letting the ideas course through my veins and fly out my fingertips without left brain interference. Pure, unbounded freedom of expression. I can really get down with that.

I find words and images everywhere. Feelings are as visible as breath in the freezing air. I spent two hours in a coffee shop the other day and wrote four rough drafts of poems. "Rough" is the operative word here. For these happy tracks to become real poems, a labyrinth someone else can follow in order to find the meditative center, the hidden treasure, they need (dare I breathe the word) revision.

Think about that word, "revision." In its simplest form it means "seeing it again." I love the initial vision, the dream, the breakthrough. Good writing requires us to look at what we've done again (and again) closely, with a willingness to pare away the excess; to find what's unnecessary and cut it out. We must be willing to throw a lot of words and images on the brush pile and burn them in order to find the essential core of the poem or piece of work. Think of it as a "bonfire of the vanities." It will keep you warm while you continue to work on your revision.

Anybody who has read my work knows this is not my forte'. This is why I require help. I have a writing group who kindly critiques my poems and pieces and lets me know what works and what doesn't. I have a writer spouse whose parting cry after reading my work is often, "Cut, cut, cut!" And I have my own determination to make the best poem or essay possible.

Revision is where the work, the real nitty-gritty, no guts no glory drudgery begins. It's true that some people love this part. They are the opposite of me. They may be terrified of the unbroken snow of a blank page, but they love to fix stuff. Their left brains click in, their little inner perfectionists grin and rub their tiny hands together, and they throw out useless words and phrases as easily as if they were born to find fuel for a bonfire. And as hard as this is for the "natural," it is a crucial part of the creative process.

The next several posts will deal with revision. I'll tell you my experience; what helps and what doesn't. Keep in mind that you don't want to burn something beautiful in your efforts to prune the grove. So always copy your initial work as is, save it, and check back to make sure you haven't lost a needed branch of your initial vision.

Here's an idea. Pick a recent rough draft or untouched poem of your own. First save it; then work on it as you read the posts. I'll do the same. Let's see if my suggestions can help us re-vision our pieces.

—Mendy Knott is a writer, poet and author of the collection A Little Lazarus (Half Acre Press, 2010). To order your copy of A Little Lazarus directly from the author, please click here.