“And as Dante passed through Circle IV, he witnessed a field of stone desks with bodies behind each, bound at the waist by twine. At each desk, one body wrote sloppy writing and handed it to the second. The second methodically threw shreds and bits into the flames until nothing remained. The writing body shouted, “Why do you kill?” and the revising body shouted, “Why do you drivel?”, and both returned to their paper, only to repeat the actions, all the while screaming.”
Okay, so my interpretation might be a bit off, but the point remains: Revising is the nightmare that all writers must face, and it can do more to cut us down to size than any Headless Horseman or Grim Reaper (Unless of course we are revising a story about the Headless Horseman or Grim Reaper).
We would all love to never have to edit or proofread our own work. We would all love to flow through each line and word, feeling it is perfect, rejoicing in the moments we can drop that one profound phrase or tear-jerking scene and then moving onto the next delight without ever looking back. But the truth is that we can’t: We aren’t physically capable of it (and if you believe you are, then you obviously have never checked to begin with). We cannot sort the entire scope of our thoughts in our head, translate them into the extremely limited medium of words, and still expect them to come out as perfectly as we envisioned. Generally when we try to do this, we fail; after all, the road to hell is paved with good intentions… or is it clichés? Or irony? Or parentheticals? (You know what? Maybe there are multiple roads to hell of varying types of pavement. Who am I to judge hell’s infrastructure)
Instead, the true process lies in building our work like a snowflake, pilling ice on top of previously-set crystals, stage by stage, branch by branch until the final piece of art is suddenly present.
This may sound simple enough, but as anyone who has ever seen the spontaneous freezing of purified, super-chilled water will know, these beautiful ice crystals cannot form alone. No, they require a foreign point to work out from—an impurity, an abomination of their own beauty. By natural design, at the heart of each and every snowflake lies a piece of dirt (To be fair, it’s a piece of dust, but you get the idea).
Writing is no different. No matter how grand our goals may be, at the center of every Magnum opus is something that seems entirely worthless, even if it’s no longer visible in the final result. Every choice we make is another branch in the design of the final piece: Should the window be foggy or clear? Should this character use “you are” or “you’re”? Should one of the characters speak with a British accent (In which case the answer is always “yes”)?
The problem only lies in transitioning from this worthless precursor to the final masterpiece. So why isn’t everyone able to take this journey? Simply put, it can damage someone as effectively as a torture device.
Perhaps my opening parody might seem a little farfetched, but I believe it is quite accurate. When we undertake the task of revising something we truly feel worthy of dedicating our time to, we become split in two halves (and neither are happy about what’s going to happen). One knows only the passion that went into the piece. The other, the expectations of it. One side cries as its hard work is forgotten, the other screams in disappointment as every line falls flat. It is the poor, inexperienced writer who, upon finding this divide, is tempted to quell the feud by slaying one or the other, unaware that one of two fates awaits them. If they allow their passion to die, they lose all power to write, and if they allow their expectations to die, the writing loses all power whatsoever.
It is the fortunate creator who knows to let this conflict continue and to let it pull on them, for after the battle—after every slash has been struck and change has been made—what remains is something built from the misery of both parties, something better than before, something closer to perfection. With this comes a feeling of accomplishment, of victory against self-doubt and disappointment (forces more lethal than any blade or poison).
For every writer, this is our life: We revise in hopes that our keystrokes and ink-marks may be transformed, through our pain, into something worthy of recognition and timelessness. We expect to be tested by our own flawed emotions, but we are never sure how long the test will take. Hours, weeks, years. The length of the work may give us a hint, but the exact period is never known.
Still we persist, withstanding our trials because in the end it is not the words that decide the worth of a page but our perseverance.
