And you thought it was all over, along with Christmas, New Year’s, and Festivus’ dreaded “Airing of Grievances.”
As the four-part “From The First Draft To The Last” series was winding to a close, reader Turenn, whose request kicked it all off in the first place, came back with a follow-up:
“Is there another danger, though, you can revise too much?”
Funny you should ask. I was already thinking of touching on this very thing.
There’s a great quote by Tom Waits floating around somewhere, whose exact wording eludes me, but the gist of it is this: If you overwork music, if you sterilize and pasteurize it too much, then it loses all its nutrients. And if you compare Waits’ recordings, especially his borderline-primitive stuff from the last dozen years, to the average bright, shiny, auto-tuned, squashed-dynamics shard of pop confection, you’ll understand exactly what he means. One sounds alive and breathing; the other sounds like the sonic equivalent of glare off a windshield.
Now, with the written word, I don’t think of overworking overkill as exhibiting quite the same symptomology. Highly polished work has a tendency to scoot out of its own way and not draw attention to the amount of labor that went into it. But Waits’ point is well taken.
Because, with the revision process, you can definitely hit a point of diminishing returns.
- You’re overdoing it if it grossly interferes with what Seth Godin calls shipping: finishing something up and getting it out the door.
- You’re overdoing it if you’re repeatedly second-guessing yourself over every minuscule detail.
- You’re overdoing it if you find yourself obsessing over what readers might find wrong with your work, instead of what they may find right with it.
- You’re overdoing it if you take a work that in your gut feels more or less balanced, then keep slathering on more words or frantically hacking them away without any clear reason why, other than that you feel “It needs something, something…”
You get the idea.
Breaking those cycles … knowing when to say when … getting a feel, like a master chef, for the moment the dish has reached its peak … these are mostly matters of instinct and experience.
It takes trust in the process. It takes self-confidence. Sometimes it may even take courage, the courage to tell yourself, “It may not be perfect, but it’s the best I can make it right now.”
This will come. Whether you have sound instincts from the outset, or these sensibilities get honed through practice, it will come.
[Photo by D Sharon Pruitt]
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Dear Brian,
I’m determined to write second, third, fourth drafts of stories I’ve already written, to get them right. No more procrastinating ; it’s my New Year’s resolution. I shall be careful, though, not to overdo it.
By the way, I’ve just finished reading your short story With Acknowledgments To Sun Tzu. It was superb. Heartbreaking. It seemed to be more than a horror story, more a literary short story of the William Trevor variety, a character study of people who study real-life horrors as part of their job. Do you feel like you’ve got a mission to fulfil with your stories, other than to entertain?
Many thanks for the good words on “…Sun Tzu.” Really, I always try to put characters first.
As for what goes on behind the curtain, I don’t think ‘mission’ is quite the term for it. That, to me at least, suggests a narrowly focused objective that doesn’t tolerate much deviation. Like the Blues Brothers: “We’re on a mission from God.”
I suppose what I feel is more of a sense of responsibility: to keep working to improve my craft, and, probably more to the point of your question, to write the best renditions I can of the stories and novels that show up to be written. If something wants to be an entertaining trifle, and not much beyond that, OK, fine. If it demands more serious layers, then sure, I have a responsibility to do justice to those, too … but while still maintaining a responsibility to the reader above all, because the first thing most readers want is to get lost in something.
I just fought this battle with my first book. I got back the final proof copy and nearly launched into yet another full rewrite! Finally my husband reminded me that I would never ever feel like it was done. The real question was it strong enough to finally abandon? That helped and I backed off and actually got it out. The real test of whether or not I have learned something will be what happens when I start editing the sequel!
Welcome to veteran status, then. I think it’s almost inevitable that, the more times you go through this experience, the greater your confidence builds, which makes it easier and easier to recognize the point when you hit ENOUGH. Good luck with #2!