Revision: Sleeping With Your Work

Once you've begun working on a larger piece--say, a collection of poems or short stories, a novel, or a show for your art work--more drastic measures may be in order. I find it helpful to let myself go a bit. I do not mean drink and do dope like the "tortured artist" stereotype with which we are all too familiar. In fact, this can be tempting at times, but it's a great way to screw up whatever potential you have for great art, too. You may be in pain, at least a little at this stage of the game, but pain is an essential part of the process. It is, my creative friends, the razor's edge.

That sharpening of the senses may feel a little (or a lot) like pain, but shows us the finer points of our work and helps us shave away all that is not essential to the final product. You actually need that pain, so don't dull it. Sure, stepping back at the end of the day with a glass of wine or a beer and observing what you have accomplished that day with an objective eye is fine. You may even want to make yourself a note or two to be reviewed in the bright light of morning. But I advise strongly against touching your work or making any changes while under the influence of intoxicants of any kind. They are painkillers, and as I said, a little pain is your friend right now.

The days of the drunk and drugged up artist are over, or should be anyway. Personally, I think it was bullshit in the first place; a figment of their imagination, a creature invented so that the creator had an excuse to indulge, self-indulge, and over-indulge. You can be special without drawing a lot of unnecessary or unwanted attention to yourself. If the tortured look appeals to you, (and I admit there's something to that frazzled appearance and feeling at times), there are other, much safer ways to achieve it than spending all night at a local bar talking about your work as opposed to doing it.

I simply don't bathe or shower or comb my hair for a few days. I don't change my clothes. I sweat when I work. I look wrinkled and worn (and I usually am). I stay up late and get up early. I eat a lot of yogurt and popcorn, or just forget to eat entirely. Most of us Americans can afford a missed meal once in awhile. I forget to brush my teeth. In other words, I look as raggedy as I am beginning to feel. It's the real thing, though, and not chemically induced.

Finally, let me encourage you to sleep with your work. That's right--at the beginning I advised you to sleep on the work before beginning to edit. But now that you are in the thick of it and your office or workspace looks like a tornado came through, not once but several times, I'm telling you to lie down in the midst of it and go to sleep. I find this eccentricity not only helpful, but comforting. I'm already so up to my chin in the project that I might as well go ahead and camp out amid the papers and pens, laptop, glasses, cups, and crumb-laden plates. I cannot entirely discount the idea that osmosis really works, at least a little.

I have a wonderful wood stove in my living room and an old couch made more comfortable by a board put beneath the cushions. In the middle of a long project revision and edit, I build up the fire around midnight, damp it down, put a comfy pillow and some soft blankets on the sofa and sleep there among my papers and notes. I watch the flames flicker and the coals glow until finally I fall asleep. It never fails. I sleep like a baby and wake completely refreshed and ready to dive into work, my creative project immediately to hand.

Lets face it. When you're deep in your work, you aren't good company for a lover or spouse anyway, so you might as well leave them alone. You are having an affair, an affair of the heart, with your work. If they love you, and have any sense of self-preservation at all, they will gladly leave you to it. Give them an absent-minded kiss, and lay down to sleep with your work. Show your creation that kind of respect, and I promise you will reap the rewards for your faithfulness in the end.