The Magic of Revision

by Monica Drake, Senior Editor

Image courtesy of Unsplash

When I sit down to revise my own novel-in-progress, there are two ways I might feel as I come to the work. One is a sudden, full-on exhaustion. The book is three hundred pages, with countless choices I’ve already made. Where to start with revision? The sense of being overwhelmed can be daunting enough to send me back to the kitchen for a third cup of coffee, out to walk the dog, or to the basement to sort laundry. It’s easy to run away from the writing desk. The world is full of beauty, magic, good dark roast, and daily chores, all calling my name.

But the creative spirit clicks in once I settle in and break through my own resistance. Then I start to see new ways of making each chapter become more intentional, stronger, and more compelling. I find details to bring into focus and others to weed out. I decide when to move closer to a narrator’s bodily experience, when to summarize, when to unpack. There’s magic in realizing that what seemed solid was only a set of choices and may have fallen short. The trick in moving from overwhelm to the creative process is in asking the right questions of a manuscript overall, then one chapter at time, one sentence, one character, one scene, one word.

Here are a few questions that I often ask:

• What is it that I, as the author, really want to offer to the world with this novel?
• Is there anything muddy in my delivery?
• Does each chapter contain an element of forward propulsion?
• How are characters and perhaps power dynamics changed through each scene?
• Are there chapters which could be cut, to free up the motion of the narrative?
• And finally–readers invest in writing that rewards their engagement. How does the work in hand reward the reader? Maybe it’s with joy, information, insight, or otherwise.

Those are a few of the ways I approach my own work-in-progress. I hope they might help others stay inspired, energized, and proactive, as we all write and revise. Once the work is as clean as I can make it, then I enlist a new reader. It’s a process we can share with each other. As an editor at Indigo, I bring the same thoughtful approach to every manuscript to come my way, reading every work as a draft, revision as one more step on the path to the book it will become.

Monica Drake brings thirty years of writing, teaching, editing, and consulting experience to her work with Indigo. She has been a college professor, designed and launched a BFA in Writing (PNCA), and launched a speaker series. As an award-winning author, her books include two novels, Clown Girl and The Stud Book, and a collection of linked stories, The Folly of Loving Life. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The New York Times’ “Modern Love,” The Paris Review, The Sun, Oregon Humanities magazine, the Rumpus, and many more publications as well as anthologies.