Writing brave and free: encouraging words for people who want to start writing by Ted Kooser & Steve Cox

Author:Ted Kooser & Steve Cox [Cox, Ted Kooser & Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Language Arts & Disciplines, Authorship, Composition & Creative Writing, Publishing, General
ISBN: 9780803278325
Publisher: Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, c2006.
Published: 2006-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

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SECTION SEVEN

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Revision and Getting Help

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[First Page]

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Kim — University of Nebraska Press / Page 113 / / Writing Brave and Free / Ted Kooser and Steve Cox 1

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Kim — University of Nebraska Press / Page 114 / / Writing Brave and Free / Ted Kooser and Steve Cox 1

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Revise and Wait

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Writing is like shoveling snow—all the details you want to write about 10

accumulate so rapidly that you can’t get them all down. You’re not sure 11

that they will come to you tomorrow, and you’re not yet confident that 12

you will have plenty of other things to write about if your memory 13

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fails.

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Revising, on the other hand, is like carding wool or like combing 15

out long strands of hair—raking out the tangles, the cockleburs and Lines: 47 to 74

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dirt, and leaving the long strands clean and smooth and straight so 17

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that a comb can pass through the long, smooth hair unencumbered.

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Before you send a poem, story, essay, or chapter out in public, you

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will want to make sure its shirt is tucked in.

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It’s a rare first draft that can be published or even read in public.

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EX

Almost every piece of writing needs some rewriting, rethinking, and 22

polishing before it is ready to take center stage.

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The first step in spotting the flaws in what you have written is a

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simple one. Set it aside and let it cool off for a while, the longer the 25

better. Take a look at it after twenty-four hours if you must, tinker with 26

it a little, then set it aside again for as long as you can stand to. As if 27

you had put it in a petri dish, the longer you leave a piece of writing 28

by itself the more spores of trouble will surface. If you can bear to do 29

it, leave it alone till it begins to look as if somebody else might have 30

written it. (Stephen King sets the first draft of his books aside for six 31

weeks before writing the second draft.) Then you can see it for what it 32

is, a creation independent of you. Writing has to be equipped to thrive 33

on its own in a largely indifferent world. You can’t be there with it, like 34

its parent, offering explanations, saying to an unappreciative reader, 35

“Yes, but here’s what I meant . . .”

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Just what should you expect to see when you look at your writ-37

ing after it has rested for a time? All sorts of things: peculiar syntax, Kim — University of Nebraska Press / Page 115 / / Writing Brave and Free / Ted Kooser and Steve Cox 116

Revision and Getting Help

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tortured grammar, illogical thinking, misspellings, wordiness, silliness, 2

preciousness. You may discover that the sweet sounds and rhythms you 3

heard in your head when you wrote it now sound lumpy and awkward.

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(If you want to, you can ask for a little help here. Have a friend

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