Revising, Revising, Revising Again

Easily among the more underratedly tedious and difficult aspects of the writing process is the long procession of revision work that must follow every first draft. This can easily prove to take just as long (if not even longer) than the draft writing process itself, and requires an entirely different set of skills, namely the ability to identify you true aim within a narrative, the specific voice you wish to use, and a coherent sort of style. These are all very abstract, tough-to-pin-down concepts, making the revision process frequently one of deleting and re-writing, then deleting and re-writing again. I recently went through some fairly challenging revision work myself earlier this week in trying to polish a short piece for submission to several magazines, and was once again reminded of how tricky it can be to write something that flows at a good pace, is efficient with its words and its readers' time, and is overall coherent with regard to tone and style. It is hard to come up with good advice for beginning writers facing this challenge for the first time, as going through intensive revision is an absolutely integral part of the creation process, and nobody but yourself can really know exactly how you want a piece to turn out. Typically, however, the best thing to do after writing a first draft is to simply take a significant break before diving back into edits, and to make sure to get a trusted other person to give notes of their own. Some of the clearest, more straightforward recommendations to this end I have ever recieved came from a writing teacher I had during a program with the Kenyon Review literary magazine, who described a her tradition of shelving for her first drafts for a month, followed by a general revision by herself only, the showing of the piece for comments by others, a second revision, another significant break, and then the completion of the final draft. While obviously not the end-all-be-all strategy, this makes real sense to me and addresses the need for both a cooldown by the author and notes from outside sources not given during the early writing process. Still, revision will always be challenging and occasionally frustrating, but going into the process expecting to come across difficulty can make it a rewarding and valuable part of writing instead of simply a slog. As for me, I continue to grow faster in my own editing skills and ability to love this tough work, but still never fail to require large rewrites and the shifting of ideas well after the completion of first drafts.