Some thoughts on revision.

As I sat down to work on the revision process for my new story, I felt something different about my writing this time around. It was strange to feel that my writing has changed over the course of my MFA program. It wasn't that I felt the draft was more complete than earlier first drafts but I did have a sense that there was a level of maturity(?) in the draft that hadn't been there before. Each time I come to the page there is something different in each new story but this time it felt significant and it felt good to feel like there was some payoff for all of the hard work I have put into this program.

Now, the revision process itself seemed very difficult this time around. For one, when writing this story I knew there were going to be some significant holes in the text where I would have to do additional writing to fill in the gaps but when I came to those places in the text it seemed a momentous task stood in front of me. RE-submerging into the text proved difficult to me. The initial visualization was difficult but this was something different. When I write first drafts, a lot of times, I can feel a subjugation of my personality and mind take place, it feels like the story comes forward of its own volition in some kind of subconscious process.

One advisor, a couple of terms back, told me that he believed that I used writing as a form of self-hypnosis that the words pouring out of me seemed to take me to place that was different from my conscious mind. The way I read that feedback then made me believe that he felt it was a negative method and that the self-hypnosis was actually cluttering my texts. I'm going to have to find the letter and reread it. Anyway, I'm beginning to think that it isn't such a negative thing at all. First drafts can be born in this fashion but the revision process needs to be the application of the rational and creative minds in order to fashion the story into the desired final draft.

I think this is where I was having problems with the text. The story is new and so there is a faint trace of that subconscious mind present when I come to it again with an eye towards revision. I believe this is where I was having a problem with the re-imagining. When I get distance from my stories I can see the form of them clearly and it is merely a matter of removing the offending blotches of clay that are still stuck to the form, possibly there is an issue of positioning the figure but these problematic elements are clear to my rational mind. I wonder if I will be able to do any significant revision of this story before it is due. Well, I have six days to find the answer.