Destruction or Creation?

Is revision destruction or creation? A hike in upstate New York forced this question on me.

In August 2017, my husband and I traveled to the Fingers Lakes area to celebrate my birthday. My husband is less of an adventurist and more of plain ol’ good sport, who likes his wife to be happy and fulfilled. I am always hopeful that I can convince him that what nature offers is infinitely more interesting than whatever is on ESPN. I might have succeeded on this trip.

On this delightfully cool August day, we drove out to Watkins Glen Park, located on the tip of Seneca Lake. The hike took an hour at a leisurely pace through the somewhat crowded trail. While rounding the hooks and crooks of the trail’s curves, the biggest danger was not sideswiping a six-year-old and accidently knocking him into stream below. By reading the trail’s info-graphic signs, we learned that the rock formations had been carved over the course of a million years by the force of water.

As we wound our way around rock and stream, I was struck by the beauty of destruction. It was breathtaking.

Was the water forming beauty or destroying rock? Or both? Was it subtracting or adding to the natural world? I became both beguiled and alarmed at the idea that the same action could produce two simultaneously contrasting and cohesive conditions.

I reflected on my own writing process. One of my professors once said that my greatest strength was knowing when I had written crap. As harsh as it might sound, I have reached for that advice many times as I go about destroying the crap I have written. However, I don’t always destroy, sometimes I carve, smooth, rough away the edges until maybe it transforms into something useful, maybe even beautiful. I sometimes slice it off and save into a file believing that I might return to it one day, if needed, to find a home for it. Some refer to this scrap heap as the graveyard of the darlings, or the proverbial oven that through darkness and neglect will supposedly bake my doughy words into something worth serving. I’ve returned to that oven a few times to pull out some writing crap that I can polish and form by destroying and creating anew.

Comparing my writing, or the writing process, to something as amazing as the rocks on the Watkins Glen hike feels presumptuous. But the sense of allowing the process its due time took hold that afternoon. Allowing the slipperiness to slow our steps, allowing the rainwater to pool in the crevices, allowing the gasps of the crowd in front to warn us of impending beauty. To allow the rain and water droplets to carve away something in order to form it into something else.

There was a time when that carving process in my writing was angst filled. Was I making the right editing decision? Would I regret the lost words? Would I mourn a past inspiration that now lay silent? Early in my writing life, the knife wielding revision style (as described by Benjamin Percy’s book on revision, Thrill Me) intimidated me. Over time, I’ve realized that what I might carve away could yield something else that, perhaps, would be improved, maybe even right in the end. Let’s just hope the end does not require a million years!

Oh, and my husband never mentioned ESPN on that hike. But he has mentioned returning to Watkins Glen someday.