A Network of Revising Stories

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The first four revising stories—refining, casting, sculpting, and painting—suggest that the writer goes back into the text to rework its inorganic substance, to reformulate it. Dickey, refining ore for its gold, breaks apart his drafts into their constituent elements in order to find and transform the most valuable. With their casting and recasting, Ashbery, Fowles, Mazzaro, Michener, Welty, and West return their drafts to the amorphous, liquid state of beginnings and generativity. Goyen returns to chisel away in shaping his text. Adoff, Chester, Gardner, Major, Munro, Rosten, and Stegner may continue to remold their texts many times. And MacInnes, Moravia, Petrakis, and Vidal add layers to alter the texture and form of their texts dramatically. Thus a significant proportion of revising stories indicate that writers see themselves making substantial changes during revising. It also appears that these metaphorical stories about reformulation may form a harmonious group: They all imply a unitary text, rather than one composed of discrete parts that can be handled separately. The intention seems to be primarily to produce an aesthetic object, beautiful and valuable; its potential communicative ability is suppressed. In casting, sculpting, and painting, the objects have considerable aesthetic and communicative value, while the object in the case of refining ore has high value as a commodity. Writers apparently place high value on reformulation as a way to discover, construct, shape, and develop what they have to say. And they demonstrate this in stories that are congruent with one another.

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The stories that suggest revising as a process of smaller-scale or late-stage changes—fixing things, sewing, tying things off—offer interpretations of the nature of revising that differ from those suggested by reformulation stories, yet seem in harmony with one another. These stories do not appear to place as much value on either process or text as do stories implying reformulation. The tasks are more those of craft and rule, rather than those of heavy labor or art; they make fewer demands on physical strength or artistic talent. The products are not so valuable aesthetically or as commodities; and they do not have the kind of communicative function that artistic objects do. These stories stress the superficies of the text; they are stylistic rather than formal, local rather than structural.

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Some instances of such metaphorical stories (of fixing things, in particular) even imply that writers are slightly disrespectful of the value of such revising—when the writer is “banging” or “tinkering,” for example. And there are other terms used to describe small-scale revising that appear to reflect ambivalence or self-deprecation; writers mention, for example, having to “chew” (William Gass, 1983; Martin Myers, 1973), “diddle away” (Allen Ginsberg, 1967), “niggle” (Lawrence Durrell, 1963), and “pick” (Christopher Isherwood, 1976) at their drafts; needing to “fiddle” (Fred Chappell, 1973; Raymond Federman, 1983; William Gass, 1983; Tom Mallin, 1981; Judith Minty, 1977; Alan Sillitoe, 1981), “fuss” (Ann Sexton, 1974), “mess” (Richard Wilbur, 1974), “monkey” (John Graves, 1980; Leo Rosten, 1964), or “play” (Ralph Ellison, 1974; Anne Sexton, 1974) with them. Stevie Smith and William Gass provide us with the image of a somewhat bedraggled text, dragged about by the writer-as-dog:

[With a poem]... one sort of throws it away and goes and digs it up and tosses it into the air and finishes it off or doesn’t finish it off. (Smith, 1966, p. 225)

Much... will have begun... earlier... and [been] worried and slowly chewed and left for dead many times in the interim. (Gass, 1983, p. 158)

We need not assume that such expressions reflect writers’ actual attitudes toward minor, surface, or late-stage revision (they may well represent a rhetorical pose considered appropriate for discussing such revision)—but they do reflect a tendency to discredit revising activities that is not present in reformulation stories.

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Taken as a whole, the metaphorical stories about revising in my corpus seem to imply a set of relations among the nature of the material, stage of revision, and how it is revised. The material to be revised may be at one time molten, malleable, flexible; it is possible to reshape it and change it totally. Revising material in such a state tends to be represented by metaphorical stories about hard labor and artistic processes (refining, casting and recasting, painting, sculpting). At another time, the material is still somewhat flexible; alterations can still be made. However, attention is going not to the totality of the text, but to the fit and functioning among parts. Revising material in such a state tends to be represented by stories about draft and mechanical work (fixing things, sewing and tailoring, tying things off). When the text seems to be relatively “solid,” writers “cut,” focusing either on the material to be saved or that to be eliminated. And when the “surface” of the text seems to have “hardened,” at least temporarily, writers engage in craft work again, as they “polish” or “touch up.” When we talk about revising as a cyclical, recursive process, we are indicating that these states may occur and reoccur as writers complete their texts, though in general texts move from malleability to solidification, and writers from working on substance and shape to working on surface.