Returning to George Saunders' writing and revising advice

Adam is embarrassed to admit that he keeps returning to his own February blog post of George Saunders’ writing advice. So it was relief to hear Ezra Klein acknowledge today that he keeps returning to his own February interview with George Saunders. Here’s a useful excerpt from that interview, all about Saunders’ revision process.

EZRA KLEIN: Tell me about that revision process. So you begin with that draft, you have that draft which has its obvious opinions, and it’s punching down. And then what happens, both just literally — like, there are eight drafts and you work on them all in the mornings before 10:00 AM — and then it feels to you internally between there and the product I end up reading.

GEORGE SAUNDERS: Yeah, I mean, it’s different every time. But mostly it’s I’ll print out a nice clean copy the day before. And then just by hook or crook, sit down in front of it. And start reading it with a pen in hand, a pencil in hand.

And then in the book I describe this kind of metaphor, which isn’t of course, literally true but it’s pretty close. There’s a meter in my head with P on one side for positive and N for negative. My idea is that the meter responds when I read prose. Just like when you’re in a bookstore and you pick up a book, you’re either still reading an hour later or you toss it aside.

So the whole thing for me is to be reading my work as if I didn’t write it. As if I just found it on a bus seat or something. And then all the time, another part of the mind is watching that meter, basically saying, what would a first time reader be feeling right now? In or out, in or out?

And it’s all happening in a split second. None of that, the meter is not there. But in a split second I’m going, ah. So there’s a certain feeling I’m hoping for, which is a kind of amused engagement like, yeah, yeah, OK, sure, sure.

Then you hit a bit of ice. It’s something that’s suddenly like, ugh, the needle goes into the negative. Or something about this sentence just feels like it isn’t right.

Sometimes it’s a feeling that it’s too banal. It’s a sentence anybody else could have written. Or sometimes the logic goes off. You’re saying something that is forced or isn’t true. 

And then part of this process that might relate back to meditation is that at that point, you’ve got some choices. One is to say to your internal needle, bullshit, you’re wrong. It was perfect yesterday. That’s not the best response.

The other thing is to sort of say gently, OK, all right, duly noted. How about if I just go past you, and I’ll read it again in an hour or so and see if I still agree with you. If so, I’ll make a change.

Or the best thing is when you just, in an instant like that Frisbee, you go oh, I could just cut this phrase. And if I cut that phrase, that moment of resistance would be less. So it’s that.

And then practically speaking in a good writing day, I might get through a seven page story two or three times in that spirit. And I’ll make the changes, put them in, print it out, read it again. And then at that time, I can feel something start to go a little bit loose in my head where I’m not really as discerning as I should be. And I’m starting to make changes just for the sake of it. And then I’ll quit.

So the act of faith is that if I do that thing that I just described for many, many days, and weeks, and months, at some point I can get through the whole thing with the needle up in the positive area. Another way of saying it is you basically brought many different yous to the table. You brought the anal retentive you, and the self-celebrating you, and the grouchy you.

And the funny thing is over time, it does kind of stabilize into something that you can read over and over with mostly positive feelings. And that, weirdly, and I can’t explain it, is related to this thing we talked about earlier. That the person who’s present in that 900th draft is somewhat above me on the intelligence scale, and on the compassion scale, and on the wit scale.