Building Your Book

First the walls, then the corners and edges

I love seeing Carrie’s enthusiasm about part of the second novel she almost has finished (60k words now!) or about a book she is reading. As she recently made the move into writing, now the two overlap. Last night, she noted, she wants to love the book as she also loves the writer’s view of the world, but the book still could fill out the edges of the story.

Yes, I agree, we all need a second reader who will tell us what we need in a revision. Isn’t this the role of the editor, too, to tell us what we can’t see in our writing to make the best story or book possible?

But it was Carrie’s use of the word “edges” that caught me as I looked at our bedroom. I thought of, yes, our first draft of writing is to seek out the walls and spaces the characters or speaker of a poem will inhabit. We go back to revise to add the corners, edges, see where the walls intersect, the floor and ceiling. Then we go back another time to truly describe the rooms.

Revision is the only way to write well, not the first words we lay out. An Anne Lamont sentiment that still rings true.

Something I am putting here so I can say this to students during their first weeks of class. Something I need to remind myself of, too.

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I want to end with a big thanks to Elaine and Carlos for allowing me to read my “Setlist from Topeka” docu-poem last night as a way to close the amazing bands which performed at their third annual Porch Concert in the Potwin neighborhood. I loved seeing the neighbors, indeed, walk over to the event, as well as My Neighbor’s Band!