I've never had a problem with the blank page. Writing, for me, is like diving into a great empty space where anything is possible – people, challenges, worlds, words pop into being just by sitting down and hitting 26 letters in various combinations and seeing what comes out.* It doesn't have to be right, it doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't even have to make sense or flow all the time, but it's a lot of fun to swim in it and goof around, poking and prodding to see what emerges from brain-to-flying-fingertips.

And then there's revision.

Revision has not been fun. I have heard rumors that some authors love the revision process, but I'm convinced they are either lying or have been body-snatched by alien zombies and brainwashed by those who thought that Ice Milk and Tofutti was a good idea. I'm here to say that I, at least, am not one of these people. I confess that I'd rather spend eternity eating shards of broken glass or, more frightening, willingly watch a Pee Wee Playhouse marathon. Rewriting and collaborating with my critique partners and helpful soundboards without whom I would never survive and could not in a million years ever express my undying gratitude to its fullest (*ahem*) is not only helpful and enjoyable in that scratching-a-stubborn-mosquito-bite sort of way, but major revising of the manuscript for the individual and publishing house who are willing to pay me to make it better is another story altogether... specifically, MY remade story.

Pressure much?



This is not the "nothing" that has been fun to play in. This is more like a yawning abyss sort of "nothing". This is a Nothing like Atreyu's – something ravenous, voracious, terrible and frightening. An undoing of words. My story becoming undone. It's not creating something new, it's trying to induce selective-amnesia while simultaneously retaining enough of the original idea to make it recognizable. Like closing one eye and painting with the opposite hand. Or writing your name upside-down a backwards while whistling Dixie and chewing saltines. The process is more like Marquis de Sade than Anne Lamott. An exercise that elicits visions of racks, thumbscrews, and being chained to a desk in the Pit of Despair (Or Jeff Somers' equivalent).



This, of course, is leagues from the truth.

At an SCBWI conference, one of the speakers (I suspect Richard Peck) described revision as a "Re-Vision": a reexamining and recreation of the original murky thoughts into something refined and solid. Once we've fumbled around the initial epiphanies, this was the chance – now that we were familiar with the concept – to bring the vision to its fullest potential.

Nice words, but he's friggin' Richard Peck! Me, I'm sweating.

Eventually I broke down and confessed my sins of revision hell to my editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel, who patiently listened to me trying to be professional while angsting like an emo-tween and she laid down one of her classic, concentrated-for-maximum-impact lines of wisdom: "Whenever something hurts to get out, it's a sign that it's too complicated. Simplify it, or cut." She then proceeded to tell me exactly how to solve the problem and a three-sentence breakdown of the entire book's plot and there, what was I worried about? I blinked and thought to myself, "This woman is a genius," which, in fact, she is.

I had to remind myself that this is a generous nothing, one which grants me the freedom to explore, improve, ask the tough questions and have my characters answer because they aren't just vague images anymore, these are living, breathing, fictitious people who are whole and familiar to me. Now they *can* answer me and their story is richer for it because now we know one another. The story dips into darker waters and the colors come out: reflected sky blue turns to turquoise, cobalt, deepens to sapphire, aquamarine, pine and midnight-black. This is the nothing Alanis Morissette sings about: the one she thanks profusely from the bottom of her heart.

So that's my Paying It Forward to those struggling with revision: be kind to yourself and your words, know that these initial sparks of brilliance were the things that started it all, but they only hold the gemstones you've placed there; it's the revising, digging deeper and harder, and clearing away a lot of extraneous layers of stuff, cutting and hacking and polishing the edges that let the whole story shine through.

(...and when you don't feel up to the task, click here & play!) :-)




* Sort of like monkeys writing Shakespeare. Or Baseball Mogul. (inside joke)
** All altered pics are a tribute to m_stiefvater who is far better at this than I!