When I was a college freshman, I wanted to be the next Big Poet on Campus, but I had a problem: I’d written almost no poetry, and when I tried, the resulting verses seemed so hopelessly inept the next morning that I saw no point in continuing. (What does this have to do with outlining? It’s coming, I promise.)
Then I would read W. B. Yeats and feel my spirit sink even lower: the man had obviously mastered poetic expression without even breathing hard. Had Yeats ever written a lame line? I doubted it. Great stuff just poured out of him. I might as well quit.
Can you identify my problem? It was this: I HAD LITERALLY NEVER HEARD OF REVISION.
Oh, I knew about correcting typos and cleaning up bad grammar. But creative revision – the kind of revision where each draft transformed the very anatomy of a poem – that kind of revision I had never experienced.
Then I came across an article by a literary critic named Curtis Bradford, in which he revealed 12 drafts of the poem “Sailing to Byzantium” (the one that begins with the famous line, “That is no country for old men…”). I practically fell down. Yes, there were clunkers in the early drafts, yes there were lame lines. There were even places where Yeats couldn’t come up with the word he wanted, so just left it blank.
But I could also see how he improved it, draft by draft, until he had the poem he wanted, the one that worked. I took that process as a model and before long, I was making progress as a poet.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the “outline vs. no outline controversy” – and make no mistake, there is one. I even saw it flare up among friends in one of the writing forums I visit. People are touchy about their story creation method. They can be quick to rise to its defense, and just as quick to argue against what they see as a competing method.
I’ve come to the conclusion that:
A writer’s method is a vitally important component of her ego. She depends on it to help her discover, build, and organize her creative work; in that sense, it reflects the very nature of her mind, both its strengths and its weaknesses. It is who she is.
A writer’s method often differs sharply from those of others. Sometimes she just can’t understand why the others- especially those who complain about struggling for control of their stories – why they don’t just use her method.
A writer’s defense of her working method is reasoned, but rooted in strong feeling. It works for her and that feels good. Most likely she’s tried at least one other method, and if it didn’t work, felt she had failed. She dreads remarks like, “Come on, anybody with reasonable intelligence can outline.” Those are fighting words. She takes them personally.
I have my own method, which I call The Three Rivers, but frankly, the more I think about this subject, the less I want to recommend my method, or any other particular method. Not because I don’t believe they work, but because I don’t believe they don’t work for everybody.
Here’s the principle: Each writer has to fashion his or her own “custom” version of a process; anything less will deaden, rather than enliven.
But checking out the methods of others can provide models of what’s possible.
In my case, being stubborn and solipsistic, I had to be nose-to-nose with a literal model for revision before I knew such a thing was possible–and lucky for me, it was personified, with unimpeachable authority, by the poet I revered most, W.B. Yeats.
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