Half the Battle: Part VI (of 8)
[Note: The following series, Half The Battle, is culled from a long paper I had to write reflecting on my entire experience in Goddard College's Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. It focuses on my creative thesis, a novel entitled, Gods of the Hills: An Act of Secession.]
I: Yo Joe!
II: Walking Away Into A Novel
III: Three Times Lost
IV: An Adirondack Chair, a Third Eye, and a Skrinkle Lee
V: A Future without Utopia
VI: Nos Deiciamus In Nihilum
As I proceeded into the darkness of the land of no land, it seemed my writing benefited from the process of moving three steps forward and thinking two steps back. Some decision I made on page C effected an analogy, metaphor, or fact I mentioned on page A, and the revision of that element would often inspire something new for page E.
Each flash of inspiration slowly hardened into the kind of structured development I never thought myself capable of. Things that seemed cool quickly became things that were right. Each new character, environment, and metaphor arrived ex nihilo, but after it bounced once or twice in the world of my book, its purpose and motive came clear. I didn’t worry about where it came from, where the next one would come from, or even if there would be a next one. I simply sat down at my keyboard, and trusted the words would come.
It was as if I was riding the river of inspiration from its source to the sea, allowing myself to go wherever it would take me, both frightened and excited by the unknowable twists and turns that laid ahead of me, and thanks to the advice of Kyle Bass, I didn’t dare to stop. I trusted the blinking cursor at the front of my manuscript to carry me further and further into the void — I say void because I imagined myself sitting on the cursor, but facing backwards: not looking at the next word, but at the last word, and the word before that, and the paragraph before it. I didn’t worry about the words on the other side — the blank side — of the cursor; I just concerned myself with the words that were already here. That, I decided, was the only way to write a first draft.
Which is why my thoughts quickly turned to the question: how does one write a second draft? To answer this, I followed the adage that the best way to learn something is to teach it: I designed a workshop about drafting and redrafting for students at Green Mountain College, my Alma Mater. I titled it, “Once & Again: A Workshop in Creative Revision.”
Each student, I decided, would work on a single short-story over the course of the semester, drafting and redrafting until the words honored the integrity of the original vision. Participants would learn how to summon the Muse to their workspace, but more importantly, they’d learn how to keep working once the Muse got bored and went home. The workshop would be an exercise in discipline, and its process would be putting the student’s butt in the chair.
I told prospective students that I wouldn’t run the class like a traditional creative-writing workshop, where class-time was spent on peer review; instead, we’d operate like a studio class in the visual arts. I’d spend 10 minutes discussing a particular technique of short-story development, and then for the next 80 minutes, they’d practice that technique on their story. It was the writing class I’d always wished for.
The syllabus alternated between giving the students free rein to work on their drafts and completing specific assignments that I’d give out at the start of the session. Over the course of fifteen weeks, they’d complete six drafts of the story. The first would be little more than an attempt to sketch out, using no more than 500 words, what would happen in their story; the second draft would extend the limit to a minimum of 1,000 words, the third to 1,500 words, etc.; the sixth and final draft would come in with anywhere between 2,500 and 7,500 words.
In between each draft, the students would work on a specific assignment that would inform the next draft of their short story. In the third week, for example, I asked the students to develop a list of 50 things about their main character; in the eleventh week, I asked them to revise their use of metaphors with an eye toward enhancing the larger meanings of their work.
Unfortunately, the success of the class was negligible. There are some big differences between a painter’s studio and a writing workshop. First, because painters work on relatively large canvases, it’s easier for a teacher to stand behind a student and unobtrusively watch what she’s doing. Second, it’s easier for an art teacher to make comments while a student is in mid-process than it is for a writing teacher to ask the student to stop the flow of words in her consciousness in order to hear the words of her teacher. Third, it’s easier to call students over to a painter’s canvas to demonstrate a significant lesson than it is to have students gather around a computer monitor in order to see the effect of a good deletion.
Despite the setbacks, which I noticed early in the semester, I stuck to the syllabus I designed, and as the class drifted further and further from my vision, I neglected to correct its course. The true artist’s workshop I’d imagined was nowhere to be found. Instead of students rushing back and forth to see what keystrokes of genius their peers had just typed up, I had three students staring into their monitors while I sat in the middle and waited for someone to ask a question.
I went into the teaching practicum intending to learn the process of revision, but by the time the semester ended, I’d only confirmed the strength of my stubbornness. And if there’s one thing that revision does not need, it’s a strong sense of stubbornness.
[Tomorrow: Part VII: Lost in the Flood]