Every morning as I slog through revisions to my historical fiction novel, the same thought creeps into my tired, not-yet-caffeinated-enough brain: “Wow, this writing sucks. What the hell was I thinking?” It’s too general, too boring, sometimes overly dramatic, occasionally maudlin. No one will ever want to read this. (And if I should happen to perish in a horrible blimp accident before I finish it, please burn it all to the ground so no one will.)
We all know that writing is revising. Every writer goes through this phase. Yeah, yeah. But when you’re writing historical fiction based on real people, the pressure feels even greater. These women, forgotten by history, deserve to have their stories told with clarity and grace, in language that is sharp and bright and clear. And not lame.
I found some comfort today in George Saunders’ perspective, via Anne Carley and Jane Friedman:
The artist…is like the optometrist, always asking: Is it better like this? Or like this?…As text is revised, it becomes more specific and embodied in the particular. It becomes more sane. It becomes less hyperbolic, sentimental, and misleading.
Reading this, I had to snicker. My current draft? Hyperbolic? Check. Sentimental? Check. Maybe not misleading, but sometimes unclear? Triple check. Time to revisit the wisdom of Uncle George.
As both a reader and writer, I’m a craft nerd. My bookshelf has a whole section dedicated to the art of storytelling – books about plot, character development, revision, and more. One of my favorites is Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. I’m currently wading through it (pun intended), searching for nuggets that I can apply to my work.
Saunders is all about precision — in both what we’re writing and how we’re constructing our stories. Each choice we make, consciously or unconsciously, shapes our readers’ experience. In this case, being a little obsessive is a good thing:
The interesting thing, in my experience, is that the result of this laborious and slightly obsessive process is a story that is better than I am in “real life” – funnier, kinder, less full of crap, more empathetic, with a clearer sense of virtue, both wiser and more entertaining.
And what a pleasure that is; to be, on the page, less of a dope than usual.
Maybe that’s the real magic of the revision process—the chance to make our stories, and ourselves, a little better with each scratch of the pencil, each click of the delete key. I’ll keep showing up in these quiet morning hours, working my darndest to turn each page into something clearer and brighter to give voice to the pioneering women whose stories I’m here to tell.
Read Saunders’ original article in The Guardian below. You can also follow him here on Substack and check out his publication, Story Club.
