Sculpting

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Analogies to sculpting may allow for or emphasize reformulation of the text. Writers revising may feel like sculptors chiseling. According to William Goyen,

I generally write just straight ahead... If I [look back] I get caught back there revising.... It must be like chiseling a sculpture; if the sculptor does too fine a work too soon on what’s big, heavy, gross work, then it’s out of balance somewhere. I should imagine that he has to do all different phases of gross work, and finer and finer and finer detail. (1980, p. 228)

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While drawing an analogy to artistic endeavor, Goyen envisions the writer engaged in rather heavy work, “chiseling” and shaping a large block of material, rather than applying layers of material over a base structure. According to the story, revisers can make major changes in shape through incision and removal, but not through addition, since early in the process the larger shape of the text is blocked out irrevocably. Goyen thus suggests the existence of a real yet unrealized text-as-a-whole, a text that could be irremediably damaged by the indelible strokes of premature detail. The disappointing result would waste not only the author’s time and effort but also the potential of the material itself: One could not hope to “resmelt” it or obscure one’s errors by painting over them. So Goyen’s recommended revising method is cyclical, a repeated working through the text—first large moves, then small—each time cutting a little away in order to reveal “finer and finer” detail.

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Other authors may experience their texts, their media, as malleable, pliable, something to push and pull, form and reform. Laura Chester finds the process sensuous.

I type draft after draft almost obsessively until that first soft clay shapes itself into the poem it has to become.... I love the feel of the poem as a malleable substance that I can push and reshape on the page. (1977, p. 75)

Arnold Adoff (1974) says that he has learned to work his material “over and over like... a piece of clay.” Wallace Stegner (1985) speaks of his manuscript when it is “still malleable.” Alice Munro (1973) prefers material that she can “pull.” Clarence Major (1985) “reshapes,” and Leo Rosten (1964) “reshapes” and “remolds.” John Gardner (1979) keeps “pushing” at his text. These procedures seem less mediated than casting or chiseling with their respective tools, their chisels and forges. The story emphasizes remolding the same material into a new shape—often one that has little resemblance to the original form—rather than adding or deleting material. Revising here is reformulation.