existential revision

“I’m revising my novel.”

I’ve uttered this meaningless phrase thousands of times over the years. It communicates nothing. Does it refer to the bland addition of commas, or the gutting of entire chapters? Is it small? Big? Easy? Hard? Am I almost finished, or have I barely begun?

Every once in a while — quite literally, once a supermoon — I want it to mean something. To get at just a little of what’s actually happening, under that catch-all phrase.

Logistically, of course, I am doing many tedious things: reading out loud; tracing a character’s growth and making myself be honest about whether or not it makes sense; digging for the less-obvious reaction or image; doing logic-Sudoku to make sure the novel timeline holds up; disparaging my own dialogue; leaving myself helpful notes on my novel printouts like this:

But there are other things!

Sometimes I find old passages that I’ve forgotten about so completely that I read them with the chilling feeling of a Victorian lady discovering the dead wife’s diary in the eastern wing of the mansion!! Who wrote this??

Sometimes I turn off my computer and eat so much peanut butter I become numb, bereft at the certainty that I have finally stumbled across the knot in the novel that cannot be disentangled, that indicates the fundamental worthlessness of the project, and then I go for a drive to get more peanut butter and something about the wing of a crow in the corner of my windshield makes me realize how to solve the problem and I drive home euphoric just to write in my notebook something like nancy should be religious!! 

Sometimes I throw away so many words and chapters that it feels like I have somehow written five books, and I begin to think of them as my friendly ghost books, disembodied but full of haunting potential.

Sometimes I am seized with an overwhelming conviction that the book and perhaps myself offer nothing to the world but then I remember that this feeling always comes and always goes, and I plunge through it like (trigger warning) Atreyu in the Swamp of Sadness (I am sorry). I make it across. Even if I have to leave my horse behind (SORRY!)

At the end of Refuse to Be Done (which is full of solid advice about the specifics of novel revision, if you’re looking for that sort of thing), Matt Bell quotes my queen Jane Smiley:

“I believe that you either love the work or the rewards. Life is a lot easier if you love the work.”

I’m usually quick to make a joke about how I must love the work because where are the rewards?? but you know what — I really do love the work. I really have been coming back to it, quietly and for no easy-to-explain reason, day after day for most of my life. Things around me change, I change, but this remains the same. It’s not discipline or anything. It’s the mystery at the center of my life. When I sit down to revise, I tend that little flame — sometimes well, sometimes not — but for some reason I always show up.

Anyway. Catch you in a month — I’m revising my novel.