"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!
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.
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