What Do I Want to Say?

Blocks, Breakthroughs, and the Revision Process

A young inexperienced writer recently asked me about the revision process. “How do you know what to change?” they asked. I knew they were imagining adding or subtracking a word or a sentence. But the revision process is about vision, envisioning a message, an idea a world that you are trying to articulate, that only comes into clarity through the words themselves. An idea or a story leads you to words and those words, if you let them, lead you to deeper ideas and even more important stories to tell. What am I really trying to say?

I have been sharing excerpts here from my next book The Body of My Mother but I have begun working on it in earnest and that means I am trying to figure out what the book is really about, and what each chapter really has to do. I thought I would share with you the first finished chapter of the book today…but as often happens with writing I have begun following a narrow passageway deep underground and today I arrived unexpectedly at a vast cavern….There’s a lot more to write and say and it’s hard writing and I’m not going to finish it today. But I am going to take you on the journey in case you are interested.