Of mosaics and meals; or, writing styles

Profgrrrrl has a great post about the way that she writes, and it reminded me that I had begun drafting this post sometime ages ago and never came back to it. So I dug it out, and realized that there were a couple of ways to answer that question - focusing on the approach to writing, or focusing on the conditions under which you write. Profgrrrrl seemed to focus a little more on the latter, and my original post addressed the latter (though of course they're really closely related), so I thought I'd try to combine them a little.

First of all, under what conditions do I write? Well, I used to do a lot more composing by hand, but now I pretty much compose straight on the computer - I type much more quickly than I write. I actually like writing by hand, and handwriting in general, and pens and paper and all that good stuff (which I collect and spend a lot of money on!), so I miss the longhand, but really can't write quickly enough to keep up with my train of thought. I do, however, HAVE to revise/edit by hand on the hard copy (and may well write long sections by hand in this part of the process), which allows me to play with my precious pens. More on revision in a bit.

Unlike profgrrrrl, I've never written in a coffee-shop or other public, non-library/work-related place. Partly this is because I don't tend to carry my laptop with me except on research trips, but it's also just my temperament. Occasionally I might do some editing or jotting down an idea that comes to me, but I'm no good at writing anywhere that there are conversations going on - I just eavesdrop instead. However, I don't need nun-like silence either; I often write with music on, and the music can have words (although ideally it's something I know really well so it can wash over me); it's just actual conversation that's a problem. So that rules out the TV/movies etc. The music thing varies, though; sometimes it works, sometimes I get caught up in my work without music and don't notice that there isn't any on. About having distractions around, Profgrrrrl comments:

I almost feel like the chaos I keep in my writing environment helps keep the thoughts close to me. (Would they run off in silence?)

I actually think I know what this means, a little, because there are times when I canNOT write in silence, and need to have music going; it's kind of like if it's completely silent, the little roving distractable part of my brain isn't going to find any distraction and is going to start eating itself instead. It's like I'm in a pure white box and have nothing for my brain to hang on to, so it just scrabbles at the walls and loses itself. That sounds very pathological, I suppose, but make of it what you will.

If writing (or any kind of work) is going well, I get caught up in it and lose track of time. I HATE being interrupted if this is the case. I really do seem to go somewhere else. It doesn't mean I might not get up and down from time to time to get something to drink or go pee or whatever, but a lot of the time, I don't.  If writing's going really well, I resent stopping for anything and when I get overwhelmed with hunger will grab whatever I can eat one-handed sitting at the computer (or just not eat). If I do get really caught up in it, this kind of writing is actually kind of deadly because while it's great and exciting while it happens, it's hard to maintain that kind of intensity for any length of time, and is usually followed by a real down period.

Luckily, I am usually fairly able to churn things out, out of necessity, and don't have to be "inspired" for the writing to work.

One thing that really struck me, though, about profgrrrrl's post was her approach to revisions:

I typically write in intense spurts -- maybe a page at a time, quickly and passionately written (as in 10 min to write the page), to be edited shortly thereafter. After each page or so I have to break and check a web site or email or something.... And then I go back and clean up the page. Compulsively. I cannot wait and do it later. I need to still be somewhat on the same train of thought.

This, for me, is the element of writing that varies the most among the writers I know. This post was originally prompted by a long phone conversation with a grad school friend of mine, part of which addressed the differences in how we write, and especially, revising. I've had similar conversations with a lot of people over the years, and most people seem to fall into two categories.

Some people - including my husband, and at least two good friends from grad school - don't really revise their writing at all, in the sense of going back to the whole thing at the end. From the beginning what they write is clear, makes sense, and stays pretty much the same once they have it down on paper. They might go back and change a word or two - the friend I was talking to last night composes longhand, and she says that she might change some of the wording when she types it all into the computer - but the basic points and structure are all in place.

Other people - and I fall into this category - are revision junkies. What initially gets put on paper almost never looks much like the final version. We pour a whole lot of words out onto the page, and then spend hours moving parts around, cutting some sections, adding others, and possibily changing our whole argument by the time we're done.

I don't think there is any one right way to write (Howard Becker has some useful comments about this). And yet, it seems to me that the revision junkies usually envy the non-revisers. Their work always seems much easier than my own (although I am probably indulging the Green-Eyed Monster here). It must be very nice to get something down on paper and know that it's extremely close to being done.

My attitude towards this changed a little, however, watching Long Distance Husband write his dissertation. He is a non-reviser. If he is not happy with a sentence, it does not get put down on the page. (Profgrrrl's comments make me realize this might actually mean he's an über-reviser, because he revises each sentence as he goes. He doesn't usually revise the piece as a whole, because he's done it as he goes along.) Really being able to see this writing style from the inside made it look less appealing, because I saw how long and hard he had to agonize before he could get any of the material into place. Some time later one of my non-revising grad school peers told a story about a crippling case of writer's block, and a conference paper to which she'd committed as a favor to a friend, and literally finishing the paper during the talk of the speaker immediately preceding hers, terrified until the very end that she wouldn't be able to pull it off. By the time the conference arrived, she didn't have everything clear in her head yet, so she couldn't write it down. As a non-reviser, she just couldn't.

This didn't sound like very much fun.

Eventually I came up with a completely mixed metaphor to describe these two approaches. My husband's writing has never reminded me of anything quite as much as the process of creating a mosaic. (I have never actually made a mosaic, so my apologies to any artists out there.) A mosaic, because each piece of a mosaic is independently beautiful and complete. My husband had to have every piece of his writing independently beautiful and complete before he could add it to the rest. And a mosaic also depends on a precise pattern: if you are trying to create a mosaic portrait, you can't put the color for the eyes in the middle of the subject's forehead. It's just wrong. As a corollary, if you don't know what the pattern is supposed to be, you can't put any of the pieces anywhere. And finally, you don't get a lot of chances to redo with mosaics - once something is put in place, it has to stay there. So you have to be really careful and make sure you know where it goes.

In contast, writing for me is more like cooking, taking whatever is on hand and putting it together into something that works. Cooking is messy. And good cooks don't usually follow a recipe - they don't always even necessarily know what they're going to end up with. Some meals produced this way are better than others, but they're all recognizably meals. The metaphor breaks down a little, because the non-revisers' visible process of writing looks much quicker than the process of building a mosaic, more like throwing together a meal; whereas revision junkies spend so much more time on the written page that they seem to be undergoing the labor of the mosaicist.  But revision junkies actually can usually write very quickly, in terms of getting words onto a page, and non-revisers often spend a long time thinking before they can write.

Profgrrrl offers something of a variation on these models, but I think is closer to the mosaic model than the meal model. Because as a cook (rather than an artist) I really CAN'T revise as I go. I really have no idea what the final product's going to look like when I start, and if I tried to revise halfway through the process, I wouldn't do a very good job because I wouldn't know what improvements were necessary yet. I might well know that if I've burned the onions I have to throw them out. But I won't know if the broth has reached the right consistency until it's simmered for the full time, not halfway through.

Okay, I'll stop belaboring these poor overworked metaphors. I'm not sure how well they work for anyone other than me. The one thing that figuring them out did teach me, though, is that I can't convert the mosaicists to cooks and vice versa. I do believe strongly in the principles behind my own approach to writing, and I emphasize them when I teach. But I hope I also emphasize that everyone has to figure out their own system and if it works for them, then that's the best measure of it. (Of course, it really has to work rather than just be a system to which one is attached by habit and circumstance - I think it's Joan Bolker who has an anecdote about talking to a grad student about his/her writing system, and asking him/her, "Where do you write?" "At the kitchen table." "And how does that work for you?" "I get nothing done." College students don't usually have a very good system in place, so I don't feel too guilty promoting my own.) There's a certain empathic divide I can't cross; I itch to introduce the mosaicists to the joy of spewing on the page and going back to the whole thing after the fact. I long to make my non-revising friends revise (if only because I think revision is so important, darn it, and it's not fair that they don't have to go through it!, or at least, the way that I do). But I try not to.

Hmmm, you think my students would put up with a lecture on this tomorrow rather than on our regularly scheduled topic?

Comments

[michelle]

Hmm, I think that college students may not have a good system in place but good writers (regardless of whether they're good college students will have a system of their own.

I write very differently depending on the venue. I don't write creatively for anyone but myself so any semi-annual creative buds just get green-housed and brought into full bloom whether they're ready or not. I don't blog for anyone but myself, although I do feel that sharing is useful, but my blog is mostly thoughtless rambling. For school/work on literature, on the other hand, I write easily when my entire argument has been formed. To this end, I admit, I've found blogging a disadvantage. Blogging encourages blurting, and while it's been invaluable for my frayed edges, it has swayed my writing at times, to just "get something down on paper" and I think my arguments are stronger when I've proofed them through my brain first.

[Sharon]

Fair to say that I write rather more like the LDH than you, NK. Which isn't to say that I have to have a fully-formed argument - though there will be some idea of outline structure - before I can write anything, but I do revise mostly as I go along and only rarely make substantial alterations to a draft. First draft isn't quite final draft, but it's not far off. If I'm a bit stuck sometimes because the ideas are too messy and disjointed, I'll jot down some rough notes which can help me work out where I think I'm supposed to be going (which usually either kickstarts things again or at least gives me something to come back to after a break).

But the process is largely mysterious even to me. I don't consciously know what I'm going to write more than a few words ahead. It certainly isn't that I'll have a sentence clearly formed in my head and then write it down, and can't write anything until I have that sentence. No sentence is sacred, and there'll be a lot of jiggling around and slashing about until I get the emphases and nuances I want to build the linking chains of the bigger argument. It's revision - lots of it - on the micro-scale (I'm doing it even as I write this comment, for chrissake); and I find that if I get that right, I'll be happy with the macro-outcome. Dunno why, though. (But it explains why I took to writing on the computer like a duck to water and virtually never write anything by hand any more.)

Isn't writing just WEIRD?

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Yes. Writing is WEIRD. Sigh, I'm still jealous of folks whose first draft is/is close to their final draft. I could do that in college, but in grad school I learned I couldn't sustain it for the 25-30 pp. required of seminars. JM commented at profgrrrrl's post that she regularly turns in (to editors etc.) stream-of-consciousness. My stream of consciousness doesn't make any sense; I regularly write at least 5 drafts b/c I have to to come up with something coherent. Makes me feel slow and inefficient.

[profgrrrrl]

NK ... Interesting post! I am, indeed, a stream of consciousness writer, and like the mosaic metaphor. I have been known to knock out a manuscript or chapter in a day (but when and only when I am "ready" to write). Even when I go back for revisions, I'm mostly just cleaning up typos.

I'm working on making myself ready to write more frequently and trying to find the ability to better do it on command (not just triggered by deadlines but at other times).

I've always envied the writers who were revisers. It seemed like they were doing the extra step I never could ... although I probably do it in my head, much like LDH.

[carla]

I'm a reviser, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Especially if one is making a long, complex argument, I think it's helpful to throw it out there without attaching yourself spiritually to a particular arrangement (though having one in mind is good), and then allowing yourself to see whether (a) your arrangement does justice to your argument, or (b) new arguments have emerged as a result of elucidating the ones you thought you were making. But a good friend was a first/only drafter, too, so I kinda understand that (even if I think it's demented). I miss writing, I have to say; I haven't written much since I finished grad school--except for extremely long letters to one specific friend--and I miss the process of assembling the research and the argument and so on.

[Dr. Crazy]

I'm a reviser (as I posted over at Profgrrrl) and I know what you mean about envying the non-revisers. I think what we envy, though, is the fantasy that the non-reviser writes as quickly and painlessly as we do but doesn't have to go back and fix things. From every person I know who is a non-reviser, this is just not true.

Another benefit to being a reviser: when you revise as many times as I tend to, it can completely disconnect you from what you've written, thus making it possible to have one of my favorite experiences upon going back and rereading, which is, "wow! that is brilliant! i totally do not remember having written that - let alone thinking that!"

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Dr. C, definitely! I often write something I think is crap but it's good enough for the moment, to get the idea down, and then when I go back a week later, I go: hey! that's actually really good! :-)

[Rana]

This is really good, and I'm with you in the "messy" writer camp. My attention was particularly caught by your comments relative to your comparing your approach to that of your husband; D. and I have the same dynamic. He will revise after the fact, but he'd really rather not have to. I, on the other hand, live for the revisions. I find it so much easier turning crud into gold than trying for gold right off the back.

I tend to think that the messy writer approach is more common and works for more people, but it is the tidy writer standard that gets held up and taught to students. You would not believe the amount of relief I saw when, while I was teaching writing, I kept telling students that the vast majority of them would find outlines more frustrating than useful, and that they did not have to do them. It was like a revelation to them.

Oh, and I loved the "Whoa! I wrote that? I am so freakin' COOL!" moments. :)

[Rana]

Erm, "right off the bat." Case in point!

[What Now?]

NK, Great post! I used to be a sentence-by-sentence reviser, with only minimal global revision, but I've now gone totally the other way. I love Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, in which she recommends writing "shitty first drafts." In fact, I now encourage myself to write deliberately bad first drafts so that I can silence my inner critic. When I sit down to start writing (always on the computer!), the first thing I type is something along the lines of "Okay, I'm kind of thinking along the lines of ..." because this deliberately colloquial language is so obviously not going to make it into the final version.

[Laura]

I just wrote about 50 pages of a novel over the course of several months without revising any of it. When I got to around page 85, I decided to go back and revise. I actually did more filling in than actual revising, but still . . . My plan is to continue in the writing in chunks, then revising vein. When I think I'm done, I plan to do some picky revising. I'm a spewer when it comes to writing--get it all down--then work out the details later.

[Mel]

Very interesting post. . . I think in my pre-computer days, I was more of a mosaic maker, but now I'm definitely more of a cook. I actually really look forward to the revising process (which I always do with colored pens on a hard copy). The hard part is spewing out that first draft. Or, worse, getting ready to churn it out. I'll spend several days tiptoing around the edge of the swimming pool before finally jumping in.

[Another Damned Medievalist]

I'll be back to give this post the thorough reading it so justly deserves. It's pretty great from what I've read. But, still behind ...