revision: poetry vs. plays
When it comes to poetry, my relationship with revising my own work has changed over the years. When I first started, I drafted on paper--usually whatever was at hand, which would have been the backs of leftover handouts and lined notebook paper. I'd then type them up, first on an electric typewriter I'd bought with my high school graduation money. Later on a word processing machine that saved to floppy discs. i would typically do some revising as I went, which meant a lot of messy cross-outs, white-out, and other telltales of previous versions. as I transitioned to typing poems in an electronic document, revision happened in both places--as I drafted in ink and when I typed up the piece to send it out. By the time I moved fully to composing on a keyboard, the revision happened much more in the flow of the writing hitting the page. I would go back later and change some things--usually clunkiness, typos, or unecessary repetition. I rarely revised much after this initial getting down. Maybe a word or two. or an uncaught mistake. Not that poems were perfect mind you, but I am definitely of the school that if something is failing, fix it in the next poem rather than the one in front of you. I wasn't resistent to edits (and usually welcomed them from editors unless I though they made the poem worse) but I had a hard time seeing the value when offered critiques of my work in academic settings. Especially in writers groups and MFA workshops where no one could even agree on what was a good poem, let alone how to write one. It was a lot of noise, alot of people's fingers in my work, and it tripped me up during the first few years afterward when i was writing less, but what I did write, I didn't necessarily want to share. The year from 2007-2011 were a strange time. I published my second book and was looking for a publisher for my 3rd, which had been returned to me when the press who had initially accepted it shut down. I was really busy with art and the Etsy shop in these years, so my attention was mostly elsewhere and poetry not something I put a priority on beyond issuing other books through the press. This later changed and I began writing regularly and sending things out, resulting in an acceptance for the wayward book and several others over the next few years, but my composition/editing stayed relatively the same. Edits during drafting and immediately after, some proofing and minor changes, and it was done, either ready to send out or add to a manuscript. Changes can happen later, usually during book layout, but those are usually calls made in the particular moment.
Flash forward to now, working on these plays, and it is a wholly different process. My first drafts are rough. I mean, the kind of rough that I wouldn't show anyone. I certainly forgo formatting, usually just typing initials and dialogue to keep my momentum going, which means everything gets more accurately formatted for drama (like stage directions.) For some plays, I can write the the scenes in order. For the Indiana zombie hotel project , it also involved several scenes that are meant to be overlapping and happening at different times, with a certain conclusion wrapping things up. But while I initially started moving through writing the scenes as they would be presented, I actually on the first real draft (not the messy draft zero, ) had to reverse engineer the play. I needed to confirm the ending before I could work out the rest of what came before, especially in terms of timeline, that even now, as I work on draft two, I am having a hard time with. It mean swapping order of some scenes, and actually deleting half of the dialogue in the first scene, which had been initially written as a 15 minute short before I decided to expand it. The previous problem, which also involves more complicated timelines, also had to be rewritten more than previous plays. Draft two is usually followed by a third draft, which is the most final, and if I am making an e-version or a print copy, this one is the one that gets laid out. This also involves polishing and revision in a couple more rounds, and is usually the first time I print it out to see it on the page. another round of polishing when I upload the galley. and yet, I will still find missing italics and extra random periods that somehow made it through all these drafts.
While trying to whip the Indiana play, I've been putting the final touches on draft three of SWARM, so will be readying that to post and release. (I've been sharing play scripts on the New Play Exchange and for Patreon subscribers, and have been making slender little print editions of the longer plays to sell in the shop and online. I have no idea if these particular scripts will ever be produced, (though some have miraculously sold, both in the shop and through online retailers so someone must be reading..lol..) The smaller plays I've been sending to open calls and contests, so we'll see if any of those catch the wind onto to the stage. On one hand, I'm finding that embarking in a new market that potentially contains the same feelings of creative isolation I've encountered in poetry, feels exciting, but also perilous. I can fail here. I need to not be afraid to fail. To shut myself off and away. When I start to feel a certain way, i have to remember I was once a beginner even in poetry, though granted I was much younger, clueless, and optimistic in those years.
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