FOLLOWING THE LINE

As I said at the time: Who am I writing to? Right now, me. A conversation with myself. Not that I want it to remain that way. In time, it may be you, the invisible reader wandering around my mind or heart. The kindred spirit. Or perhaps, as prayer, as confession to God. Who already knows the outcome. And who would cheat God? Yes, the ubiquitous “you” in contemporary American poetry may well be God as much as one’s lover.

In my experience, I really do need to get that first overview drafted, to see in part where my thoughts and heart are leading. At that point, I can begin to ask what else needs to be said about you or me, the family, faith, our part of the world (now I think of a friend who painted a much different picture of Maine than the coastal postcards most people imagine), and so on. (And don’t overlook the lessons from the convent, I tell her.)

“The new chapters in your letters have good energy,” I continued. “They move along well, keeping eyes open for details and heart for insight. A good direction!” Having just finished the ninth or tenth draft of one manuscript, retitled again, I acknowledged stages of writing and revision my own process entails. The first draft is essentially for myself: to see where the material leads. The next several revisions tend to round out the logic, support my leaps, provide background for the reader; in this stage, the work becomes wordy, by necessity and is written for others, rather than myself. Then comes the “sponge stage,” where the work begins to soak up more and more new material quotes, references, new insights; it must reach saturation point. Sometime around here, the work needs to be restructured or reblocked: the original outline or roadmap no longer leads the material through the best route. (A chronological approach, for instance, may be jettisoned at this stage.) Eventually, what I really need to say emerges, and that leads to some heavy copy editing, to make the light and dark contrasts stronger. This is when the thesaurus and the search/replace get heavy usage, too, punching up the diction, largely to expand repeated concepts and terms. In a long work, I always find a handful of overworked terms; maybe they reflect the central issues, but left untouched, they become tedious.