from the writing to the written

in

In the final throes of revisions, ever the open wound, for the first zine, reading the thing over and again and making changes tiny and large that make it so, with each return to the top readthrough, I make fewer and fewer adjustments until finally, it feels like I am no longer writing it but have written it in the past and it feels done.

Recognition that my process is infused – as best I can – with this diamond from George Saunders:

How, then, to proceed? My method is: I imagine a meter mounted in my forehead, with “P” on this side (“Positive”) and “N” on this side (“Negative”). I try to read what I’ve written uninflectedly, the way a first-time reader might (“without hope and without despair”). Where’s the needle? Accept the result without whining. Then edit, so as to move the needle into the “P” zone. Enact a repetitive, obsessive, iterative application of preference: watch the needle, adjust the prose, watch the needle, adjust the prose (rinse, lather, repeat), through (sometimes) hundreds of drafts. Like a cruise ship slowly turning, the story will start to alter course via those thousands of incremental adjustments.

And so I revise on, from the writing to the written.