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The Maker's Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts Donald M. Murray

The secret of good writing is rewriting. Every line of copy in this book has undergone the process-a process that many people underestimate. Because they see only the finished product, they aren't aware 0f the amount of cutting, rewording, reorganizing, and rewriting that goes into a piece to make it sound smooth and effortless. lt is that process of revision- and the importance of it-that Donald Munay talks about in the next essay. The basic mes- sage in Munay's essay is that revision is a continuous process.

Donald M. Murray has made the art of writing well his business for decades, In 1954, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his editorials inlhe Boston Globe.He has also been an editor of lrme magazine. Although he has published novels, short stories, and poetry, he is perhaps best known for his compositions on writing. His book, Write to Learn, is a popular college composi- tion text. His most recent b00k is a personal memou, My Twice-Lived Life: A Memoy (2001. This essay, perhaps appropriately, is a rewrite of the original, which first appeared in Ihe Writermagazine.

When students complete a first draft, they consider the job of writing done-and their teachers too often agree. When professional writers complete a first draft, they usually feel that they are at the start of the writing process. when a draft is com- pleted, the job of writing can begin.

That difference in attitude is the difference between amateur and professional, inexperience and experience, journeyman and craftsman. Peter F. Drucker, the pro- lific business writer, calls his first draft "the zero draft"-after that he can srarr counting. Most writers share the feeling that the first draft, and all of those which follow, are opportunities to discover what they have to say and how best they can say it.

To produce a progression of drafts, each of which says more and says it more clearly, the writer has to develop a special kind of reading skill. In school we are taught to decode what appears on the page as finished writing. Writers, however, face a different category of possibility and responsibility when they read their own drafts. To them the words on the page are never finished. Each can be changed and re- arranged, can set offa chain reaction ofconfusion or clarified meaning. This is a dif- ferent kind of reading which is possibly more difficult and certainly more exciting.

120 r Chapter 2 I Writers Writing: Words in Contexts

Writers must learn to be their own best enemy. They must accept the criticism of others and be suspicious of it; they must accept the praise of others and be even more suspicious of it. Writers cannot depend on others. They must detach them- selves from their own pages so that they can apply both their caring and their craft to their own work.

Such detachment is not easy. Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury supposedly puts each manuscript away for a year to the day and then rereads it as a stranger. Not many writers have the discipline or the time to do this. We must read when our judg- ment may be at its worst, when we are close to the euphoric moment of creation.

Then the writer, counsels novelist Nancy Hale, "should be critical of every- thing that seems to him most delightful in his style. He should excise what he most admires, because he wouldn't thus admire it if he weren't . . . in a sense protecting it from criticism." John Ciardi, the poet, adds, "The last act of the writing must be to become one's own reader. It is, I suppose, a schizophrenic process, to begin pas- sionately and to end critically, to begin hot and to end cold; and, more important, to be passion-hot and critic-cold at the same time."

Most people think that the principal problem is that writers are too proud of what they have written. Actually, a greater problem for most professional writers is one shared by the majority of students. They are overly critical, think everything is dreadful, tear up page after page, never complete adtaft, see the task as hopeless.

The writer must learn to read critically but constructively, to cut what is bad, to reveal what is good. Eleanor Estes, the children's book author, explains: "The writer must survey his work critically, coolly, as though he were a stranger to it. He must be willing to prune, expertly and hard-heartedly. At the end of each revision, a manuscript may look . . . worked over, torn apart, pinned together, added to, deleted from, words changed and words changed back. Yet the book must maintain its orig- inal freshness and spontaneity."

Most readers underestimate the amount of rewriting it usually takes to produce spontaneous reading. This is a great disadvantage to the student writer, who sees only a finished product and never watches the craftsman who takes the necessary step back, studies the work carefully, returns to the task, steps back, returns, steps back, again and again. Anthony Burgess, one of the most prolific writers in the English-speaking world, admits, "I might revise a page twenty times." Roald Dahl, the popular children's writer, states, "By the time I'm nearing the end of a story, the first part will have been reread and altered and cor:rected at least 150 times. . . . Good writing is essentially rewriting. I am positive of this."

Rewriting isn't virtuous. It isn't something that ought to be done. It is simply something that most writers find they have to do to discover what they have to say and how to say it. It is a condition of the writer's life.

There are, however, a few writers who do little formal rewriting, primarily be- cause they have the capacity and experience to create and review a large number of invisible drafts in their minds before they approach the page. And some writers slowly produce finished pages, performing all the tasks of revision simultaneously,

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Murray / The Maker's Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts r 121

page by page, rather than draft by draft. But it is still possible to see the sequence followed by most writers most of the time in rereading their own work.

12 Most writers scan their drafts first, reading as quickly as possible to catch the larger problems of subject and form, then move in closer and closer as they read and write, reread and rewrite.

13 The first thing writers look for in their drafts is information. They know that a good piece of writing is built from specific, accurate, and interesting information. The writer must have an abundance of information from which to construct a read- able piece of writing.

14 Next, writers look for meaning in the information. The specifics must build to a pattem of significance. Each piece of specific information must carry the reader toward meaning.

1s Writers reading their own drafts are awarc of audience. They put themselves in the reader's situation and make sure that they deliver information which a reader wants to know or needs to know in a manner which is easily digested. Writers try to be sure that they anticipate and answer the questions a critical reader will ask when reading the piece of writing.

i6 Writers make sure thattheform is appropriate to the subject and the audience. Form, or genre, is the vehicle which carries meaning to the reader, but form cannot be selected until the writer has adequate information to discover its significance and an audience which needs or wants that meaning.

17 Once writers are sure the form is appropriate, they must then look at the structure, the order of what they have written. Good writing is built on a solid framework of logic, argument, narrative, or motivation which runs through the en- tire piece of writing and holds it together. This is the time when many writers find it most effective to outline as a way of visualizing the hidden spine on which the piece of writing is supported.

18 The element on which writers may spend a majority of their time is development. Each section of a piece of writing must be adequately developed. It must give readers enough information so that they are satisfied. How much infor- mation is enough? That's as difficult as asking how much garlic belongs in a salad. It must be done to taste, but most beginning writers underdevelop, underestimating the reader's hunger for information.

1e As writers solve development problems, they often have to consider questions of dimension There must be a pleasing and effective proportion among all the parts of the piece of writing. There is a continual process of subtracting and adding to keep the piece of writing in balance.

20 Finally, writers have to listen to their own voices. Voice is the force which dri- ves a piece of writing forward. It is an expression of the writer's authority and con- cern. It is what is between the words on the page, what glues the piece of writing to- gether. A good piece of writing is always marked by a consistent, individual voice.

zr As writers read and reread, write and rewrite, they move closer and closer to the page until they are doing line-by-line editing. Writers read their own pages with

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infinite care. Each sentence, each line, each clause, each phrase, each word, each mark of punctuation, each section of white space between the type has to contribute to the clarificalion of meaning.

Slowly the writer moves from word to word, looking through language to see the subject. As a word is changed, cut, or added, as a construction is rearranged, all the words used before that moment and all those that follow that moment must be considered and reconsidered.

Writers often read aloud at this stage of the editing process muttering or whis- pering to themselves, calling on the ear's experience with language. Does this sound right-or that? Writers edit, shifting back and forth from eye to page to ear to page. I find I must do this careful editing in short runs, no more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch, or I become too kind with myself. I begin to see what I hope is on the page, not what actually is on the page.

This sounds tedious if you haven't done it, but actually it is fun. Making some- thing right is immensely satisfying, for writers begin to learn what they are writing about by writing. Language leads them to meaning, and there is the joy of discov- ery, of understanding, of making meaning clear as the writer employs the technical skills of language.

Words have double meanings, even triple and quadruple meanings. Each word has its own potential for connotation and denotation. And when writers rub one word against the other, they are often rewarded with a sudden insight, an unex- pected clarification.

The maker's eye moves back and forth from word to phrase to sentence to paragraph to sentence to phrase to word. The maker's eye sees the need for variety and balance, for a firmer structure, for a more appropriate form. It peers into the in- terior of the paragraph, looking for coherence, unity, and emphasis, which make meaning clear.

I learned something about this process when my first bifocals were prescribed. I had ordered a larger section of the reading portion of the glass because of my work, but even so, I could not contain my eyes within this new limit of vision. And I still find myself taking off my glasses and bending my nose towards the page, for my eyes unconsciously flick back and forth across the page, back to another page, forward to still another, as I try to see each evolving line in relation to every other line.

When does this process end? Most writers agree with the great Russian writer Tolstoy, who said, "I scarcely ever reread my published writing. If by chance I come across a page, it always strikes me: all this must be rewritten; this is how I should have written it."

The maker's eye is never satisfied, for each word has the potential to ignite new meaning. This article has been twice written all the way through the writing process, and it was published four years ago. Now it is to be republished in a book. The editors made a few small suggestions, and then I read it with my maker's eye. Now it has been re-edited, revised, re-read, re-re-edited, for each piece of writing is to the writer full of potential and alternatives.

Lamott lGetting Stafted r 123

A piece of writing is never finished. It is delivered to a deadline, torn out of the typewriter on demand, sent off with a sense of accomplishment and shame and pride and frustration. If only there were a couple more days, time for just another run at it, perhaps then. . . .

T H I 1 I K I T ' I G C R I T I C A L L Y In what ways d0 amateur writers differ from professional writers according to Murray? How must writers "learn to be their own best enemy"? In paragraph 12, Murray says that most professional writers go over the drafts of their writing looking for the "larger problems of subject and form" before closing in on the rewrites. Does it surprise you that so many professional writers go through so much revision of their work? Do you follow such procedures when you write? lf not, do you think you can? Murray names eight things that writers must consider in the process of revising their own manuscripts. What are they? What does Murray mean by the statement, "A piece of writing is never finished"? In paragraph 9, Munay quotes Roald Dahl: "Good writing is essentially rewriting." How well does Murray illustrate this fundamental thesis in his essay? How does Murray use his own essay to illustrate the statement, "A piece of writing is never finished"?

W R I T I t t l G A S S I G l r l M E t I T S Write an essay in which you describe the process you go through in writing a paper. Consider what difficulties you have in coming up with an idea or slant or opening. Do you make the same eight considerations Munay lists when revising? ls it ever fun? Do you ever feel "im- mensely satisfied" when you think you've got it right? Using Munay's list of eight considerations for revising, rework an essay recently returned t0 you by your instructor in this or another course you are taking. After you have completed your revisions, write a shorl evaluation on how the revised piece compares to the original, Turn in both papers to your instructor for his or her feedback on your revision effort.

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Getting Started Anne Lamott

For many students, the biggest writing challenge they face is simply getting started. ln the next essay, writer and creative writing instructor Anne Lamott gives advice on how to get the