Varied Perspectives and Internal Coherence

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My review of these stories and their associated implications certainly support Schon’s contention that each metaphorical story “conveys a different view of reality and represents a special way of seeing.” The stories themselves and, of course, the individual expressions of each story function to emphasize and suppress different aspects of the composing process. For example:

Refining ore. Dickey’s comparison to refining ore emphasizes that one’s first draft, one’s first way of approaching the problem—even one’s first 50 ways of approaching it—may not work, and achieving what one wants will be onerous, though ultimately rewarding.

Casting and recasting. The casting analogies suggest that one can return to a generative state during revision, reformulating for a better text, yet taking advantage of the shape developed in earlier drafts.

Sculpting. Goyen’s comparison to sculpture provides clear directions for a workable revising strategy: Start first to shape the whole text, then cycle back to work at finer levels of revision.

Painting. Vidal’s and Moravia’s comparisons to painting suggest that the writer may change either the essence or the effect of the work at any of the numerous stages in the writing process.

Sewing and tailoring. Didion’s and Durrell’s comments suggest that one can insert vital sections into the text even when it is nearly complete and that one should expect to have to make adjustments, so that the text will fit together and fit its audience and purpose.

Tying things off. Algren indicates that the last stages of revising are not merely at the surface; they involve going back into the text to make numerous small changes and, often, returning again to make more changes in response to what one has done during revising.

Fixing things. Chappell’s image of gradually readying an old car for the road suggests that writers cannot solve all the problems in the text at one time, in one draft; they may need time to discover how to solve other problems.

Cutting. Instances describing cutting often imply the need to separate “dead” material from that which is “alive”; the vitality of the material has to be determined according to the totality of the text rather than merely surface, sentence-level, and word-level symptoms.

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To suggest similarities between revising and another process, as these stories do, is to draw our attention to salient features of the process of revision and to highlight those features for a moment while ignoring (or “suppressing”) other, momentarily irrelevant features. Focusing on the highlighted features and implications associated with the story, we overlook the ways in which revising is unlike those processes: As Kenneth Burke says in A Grammar of Motives (1945), “A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing” (p. 49). The result, of course, is both a gain and a loss in understanding.

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For it is precisely because each story emphasizes some aspects of revising and suppresses others that it can make the process of revision—which we know to be extraordinarily complex—appear coherent. Each story encourages us to ignore aspects of revising that will not fit into the structure of the story. But in return, the story supplies us with a context for interpreting behaviors and attitudes, a context that we can use to explain unanswered questions about the process, its goals, the nature of the material, the writer’s attitudes, the steps one goes through to complete the process, and so forth. This context allows both writer and audience to overcome vagueness, inconsistencies, lacunas in the story’s description of revising, and of the associated process. For example, when James Dickey compares his revising to refining ore, he indicates that he has only a vague idea of what is involved in refining (remember, he concludes his series of steps with “and whatever you have to do to refine low-grade ore”). We, members of his audience, may have knowledge of mining or refining no more specific than his. But we nonetheless know, as he does, a relevant “story”: Mining is exhausting, back-breaking work with a recalcitrant substance; the substance must be transformed in order to yield valuable—or invaluable—results; the activity is not pleasant, but the results are worthwhile, and so forth. (See Tomlinson, 1986, for further discussion of writing as mining.)

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Lakoff and Johnson indicate that a “mere metaphor” can “make coherent a large and diverse range of experiences” because metaphors have entailments. For instance, a metaphor of “revising is mining,” or “revising is refining ore,” which is how Lakoff and Johnson might formulate Dickey’s metaphorical story, would appear to have entailments such as the following:

Revising is hard work on resistant material.

Revising requires reformulating and transforming material.

Revising turns low-grade material into a valuable product.

Revising can be frustrating.

According to Lakoff and Johnson,

Each of these entailments may itself have other entailments. The result is a large and coherent set of entailments that may, on the whole, either fit or not fit our experiences. . . . When such a coherent network of entailments fits our experiences, those experiences form a coherent whole as instances of the metaphor. What we experience with such a metaphor is a kind of reverberation down through the network of entailments that awakens and connects our memories of our past . . . experiences and serves as a possible guide for future ones. (1980a, p. 482)

Lakoff and Johnson would suggest that a particular metaphorical story about revising might appear appropriate to us, even true, if its entailments are important aspects of our own cultural and personal experiences related to revising. In addition, if the story is coherent and, therefore, memorable, during future writing experiences we may come to recognize those entailments as valid and applicable: We thereby bring structure and coherence to our own writing experiences by means of metaphorical stories we have heard.