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| Photo by Jan Bowman - Hawaii - April 2013 |
How many revisions are necessary to finish a story?
Someone asked me this. And I said, “It depends on so many factors that I can’t
say anything definitive.” In fact, most stories can continue to be improved
even after first publication and they often are revised extensively before
being republished again in collections. But I am reminded that in response to
this same question, S. J. Perelman was reported to have said, “Thirty-seven. I
once tried doing thirty-three, but something was lacking.” Now clearly that was
intended to be humorous and it did make me laugh the first time I read this in
David Madden’s useful book, Revising Fiction. Writers spend many more hours
revising than they ever spend on writing the first draft. That reality
surprises most people.
So. How long do you bake a cake? And the answer
depends on the kind of cake, the experience of the baker, the recipe, stove,
and the intended results. But if it’s not baked long enough, it will be
half-baked. It seems particularly useful to notice though, that the experience
of the writer (or baker) does play an important role in the process.
Madden describes the process studied by Wallace
Hildick in his book, Word for Word in which Hildick examined D. H. Lawrence’s
body of work and described the four revision stages writers go through in their
development.
[The writer]
1. makes a mistake, but fails to
see it.
2. makes a mistake, sees it, but
doesn’t know how to fix it.
3. makes a mistake, sees it, has
learned techniques of fiction,
but he/she just
can’t quite fix it.
4. makes a mistake, sees it, has
learned that solving technical
problems in the creative
process is just as exciting as writing the first
draft.
Of course - Madden dryly says, “Then book reviewers
come along and tell him he only thinks he fixed the problems.”
Like baking a cake, the revision process takes
knowledge of techniques, but unlike the baking of a cake, revision involves a
long, difficult process, that can be as exhilarating as exhausting. It helps me
to remember this when I am grinding along hour-after-hour revising work.
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| Photo: Jan Bowman - Hawaii - April 2013 |
I read somewhere that Raymond Carver said that if his
first draft was around forty pages, it would be half that by the time he was
finished cutting, adding, and editing, while he was “loving the process of
putting words in and taking words out.”
About Jan Bowman
Jan Bowman’s fiction has appeared in
numerous publications including, Roanoke Review, Big Muddy, The Broadkill Review, Third Wednesday, Minimus, Buffalo
Spree (97), Folio, The Potomac Review, Musings, Potato Eyes and others. Glimmer
Train named a recent story as Honorable Mention in the November 2012 Short
Story Awards for New Writers. Winner of the 2011 Roanoke Review Fiction Award,
her stories have been nominated for Pushcart
Prizes, Best American Short Stories, a Pen/O’Henry award and a recent story
was a finalist in the 2013 Phoebe Fiction Contest; another
was a 2012 finalist in the “So To Speak” Fiction Contest. She is working on two collections of short stories while shopping
for a publisher for a completed story collection. She has nonfiction publications
in Trajectory
and Pen-in-Hand.
She writes a weekly blog of “Reflections” on the writing life
and posts regular interviews with writers and publishers. Learn more at www.janbowmanwriter.com or
visit blog:
http://janbowmanwriter.blogspot.com
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