Casting and Recasting

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The possibility of major reformulation during revising is also inherent in analogies to the process of casting material. Jessamyn West says she can only reread her text when it is “molten,” when there is the possibility of revising it (1976). And John Fowles appears to think of his material as “fluid,” molten, during the time he can revise it, becoming “solid” only with the final casting—publication.

I love it when a story is still... changeable, still fluid, and you can take it anywhere, do anything with it. Once it’s printed, it’s set and frozen, like a bronze cast of a sculptor. You can’t shape it any more. (1977, p. 50)

John Ashbery uses an analogy to casting when he describes how in revision he has eliminated the initiating, generative lines of a poem.

[The initial phrases] often don’t fit into the texture of the poem; it’s almost like some lost wax or other process where the initial armature or whatever gets scrapped in the end. (1974, p. 114)

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The “lost wax process” to which Ashbery refers is a procedure for making castings: A mold of particularly heat-resistant metal is built up over a shaped core of wax; the mold is then heated, and the wax melted and drained away, leaving the mold ready for shaping other, less heat-resistant materials. The wax is essential to the process, unnecessary to the product. To compare an aspect of rewriting to a process that eliminates a supporting structure, as Ashbery did, is to suggest that evaluative criteria may lead one to eliminate elements that were vital in the developing of the text. Elements compelling to the process may be unnecessary to the product.

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If there are problems in the text, those comparing writing to casting may suggest that the casting can be done again: Jerome Mazzaro (1977) mentions that he had to “recast” an opening; Eudora Welty (1984) and James Michener (1978), their whole texts. To compare rewriting to recasting is to emphasize the possibility of substantial revising through “reheating” the material—returning to a generative state. To envision the text this way implies that the writer can continue to revise during the entire writing of the text: Options for reformulating are not closed early in the process. Furthermore, it implies that subsequent formulations of the text will be easier and more successful because a shape or mold has been developed during prewriting and early drafts.