Revising? Well, now, let's see. Revising is like..... by Anne Nesbet

So as I mentioned here a while ago, 'tis the season of revisions, here in Nesbetland; I have been whipping my middle-grade spy-vs-spy novel set in East Berlin, Cloud & Wallfish, into better and better shape. Remember the 17-page editorial letter I got from the very insightful Kaylan Adair at Candlewick? That revision!

With the aid of my trusty revision notebook (pictured here),

in which I outlined the existing version on the left-hand pages and added revision-letter questions, fixes, ideas and descriptions of new stuff on the right-hand pages, I worked through the list, and then added to the list and did it all again, and and and . . .

. . . and what you have to understand is that the past couple of weeks have been extraordinarily busy ones, even without taking revisions into account. Three other very different tasks have also been demanding my time and attention, and it occurs to me that each of these activities reminds me of revision, in one way or another. So let's explore some revision similes today!

1. Revising is like . . . correcting papers.

It's the end of the semester, so I have been grading papers and exams. Lots and lots and lots of papers and exams. Here are some of the 55 final papers I have to correct (over on the other table: a great big pile of final exams). 

When I read student papers, I can't help but think like an editor. What that means, essentially, is that I read students' work as if they were going to write another draft sometime soon. Most of the time, of course, that isn't the case. It's the end of the semester, not the beginning! But I can't help it: I want that mythical future draft to be wonderful, and I feel as though if I could only figure out exactly what questions to ask, I could help that mythical future draft come to life. So that's how correcting papers and revision are alike, apart from the obvious red-pen similarities: they both tear apart an existing work in order to create something new in the (possible) future.

2. Revising is like . . . cooking.

This time of year we have guests over reasonably often, guests who really want to be fed. Just the other day, I tried a recipe I'd never tried before: braised chicken thighs with green olives and preserved lemon. Oh, my! It was delicious! But while I was cooking, I kept thinking about how oddly like revisions cooking can be.

When you cook something for the first time, you have to do quite a bit of planning. Just to start with, you have to make lists of ingredients. (Similarly, I had to turn the editor's long letter into a list, in order to be able to begin to work with those comments.) You thought you already had ground ginger in the spice cupboard, but it turns out you have three bottles of ground cardamom, and no ginger, so off you go to the supermarket at the last minute. (In the revision notebook, the lists of comments and questions demand answers; sometimes an explanation you THOUGHT you had all worked out turns out still to be lacking something--so off you go to hunt that missing ingredient down.) But once you have all the ingredients, even the ground ginger and that pesky expensive saffron, you can follow the recipe, and miraculously something delicious appears. (That's the point in revisions when you start shifting the "fixes" on the right-hand pages in the revision notebook into the actual manuscript file.) Yes, revising can be like cooking; with luck, the end result will make a very tasty story.

3. Revising is like . . . conducting.

Didn't see that one coming, did you? But I did something yesterday that I've never done before: I conducted a symphony orchestra. Just for one piece--Manuel de Falla's "Ritual Fire Dance"--but it was a thrill, and a lot of work, and . . . it reminded me of revisions!

Before you perform, you have to rehearse. You rehearse and rehearse and rehearse and rehearse. Lots of that rehearsing is done by you alone, in front of a mirror.

The Lonely Practice Mirror

But every time you rehearse with the actual orchestra, something new goes wrong or doesn't quite work. And then you have to figure out how to fix it! I spent a lot of time over the last few weeks worrying about how to cue the clarinet and the violas at the same time when I only have two hands and they sit in very different parts of the orchestra. Or how to get the tempo moving when everyone comes in together. Or how to explain what the ticking pizzicato should sound like, beneath the flute solo. Or how to get the quiet places really, really quiet, so that when the brass comes in, it's like an explosion!

The part of my brain that spent all these weeks thinking obsessively about what I would do differently at the next rehearsal--is pretty much exactly the same part of my brain that picks apart plotting and pacing. Problem solving, problem solving, problem solving. I'll be at the supermarket, shopping for ground ginger, and suddenly I've got it! I know what has to happen in Chapter 17!

The end result of all this thinking and planning and rehearsing is a good performance. A book is not that unlike a concert, really. It's just slightly smaller in size and easier to tote around.

So those are some of my recent favorite revision similes! What do you think revising is like?