“Aesthetic luck is the major argument in favor of working through a process of revising a piece of writing through its many drafts. If you are a supremely talented artist and you hit a lucky da, then maybe you can write a poem or a story or a chapter of a novel that needs no revision. If you’re a regular writer with your appointed portion of aesthetic luck, you’ll need to come at the piece again and again. I like to think of revisions as a form of self-forgiveness: you can allow yourself mistakes and shortcomings in your writing because you know you’re coming back later to improve it. Revision is the way you cope with the bad luck that made your writing less than excellent this morning. Revision is the hope you hold out for yourself to make something beautiful tomorrow though didn’t quite mange it today. Revision is democracy’s literary method, the tool that allows an ordinary person to aspire to extraordinary achievement.” David Huddle, “Let’s Say You Wrote Badly This Morning” Breadloaf Anthology, 1989.
This retrieved from lost in an old file while in early preparation for the move to a different office this winter. Timely because the summer involves lots of writing. Timely because one project concerns "professing vocation" and in it I'm exploring an analogy between responding to a call and writing a sentence. (Yes, the preoccupation continues.)
No comments:
Post a Comment