The Cutting Room Floor
This month, I’m working through the final revision of my book before it goes into production (copy-editing, et al) so that it can come out next year. This is my last chance to make substantive changes, which in my case, involves giving my manuscript a significant haircut. Looking at suggested cuts is hard. And it brings up lots of resistance. Normally, I walk to metabolize feedback—gaining literal distance on my laptop—but I can’t walk with my broken neck unless I catch a ride down to the flats (we live amongst hills), and so my usual strategy hasn’t been working. Instead, I’ve been pacing around my living room and even losing myself in TV. (I’m proud of myself for this, actually, I need to watch more TV.) With space, I can come back to my manuscript and recognize that yes, my editor is always right. On this round, my brother, also a book editor, chimed in as well. Mercilessly.
When I was in high school, I loved Irving Stone’s biographical novel about Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy. It’s been a minute since I read that book, but the way he described how Michelangelo would liberate his sculptures from marble has stayed with me. The sculpture was there; Michelangelo simply revealed it.
I was reminded of this in Arthur Brooks’ From Strength to Strength, when he writes:
Looking at a massive jade carving of the Buddha from the Qing dynasty, my guide offhandedly remarked that this was a good illustration of how the Eastern view of art differs from the Western view. “How so?” I asked.
Elliptically, he answered my question with a question: “What do you think of when I ask you to imagine a work of art yet to be started?”
“An empty canvas, I guess,” I responded.
“Right. That’s because you Westerners see art as being created from nothing. In the East, we believe the art already exists, and our job is simply to reveal it. It is not visible because we add something, but because we take away the parts that are not the art.”
While my image of unstarted art was an empty canvas, my guide told me that his was an uncarved block of jade, like the one that ultimately became the Buddha in front of us. My work of art doesn’t exist until I add images and paint. His already exists but is not visible until he takes away the stone that is not part of the sculpture within the block.
I think writing a book—even a book of nonfiction—is the same. You throw everything at the page, you mold it into a workable narrative structure, and then the book is actually made when you carve out every sentence that’s not essential. It’s a terrifying exercise though—particularly in a medium like stone—because once it’s removed, you can’t put it back. Yes, with a Word document, you can cut and paste, revert, etc.—but the energy is usually gone. It doesn’t work when reinstated. And the point is not to make it. If something can go, it should. You have to battle your own feelings of preciousness. You have to remind yourself that the reader doesn’t care that you love a sentence or two if they don’t serve the journey of the book.
It’s really hard, and I’ve had to develop a process that’s similar to how I weed clothing from my closet. If I have a sentimental attachment to something and it can’t be donated straight away, I pack it in a duffle, store it in a closet, and then in six months, I go through the bag to see if I’ve legitimately missed anything. When I realize the connection is truly gone, I give the contents of the bag away. With my book, I highlight passages recommended to be cut. I toss what feels easy, and leave the fragments I’m attached to in the manuscript until I’ve passed through the chapter enough to then HIGHLIGHT + DELETE.
Book writing aside, there’s something to be learned from this process. I’ve been put into an intimate relationship with ESSENTIALISM (also love the Greg McKeown book by this name) by virtue of the fact that having a broken neck—and a neck brace—is quite limiting. It’s been an invitation to simplify. Streamline. Strip things down. Weirdly, in terms of the space I’m finding in my days just by canceling everything not-essential, I feel more stable than I have in years.
And as for my manuscript, well, you all will hopefully be the judge of that. I used to fear that overwork would kill the underlying energy, but I recognize now that that was just an excuse for speed. (Typically I’m very fast at writing books; I’ve never worked so hard and so long on anything, ever.) If the energy of a passage dies, you simply move it forward and re-write.
I saw a clip of Olympic runner Alexi Pappas on Instagram this week; she was being interviewed by Rich Roll. And she said something striking about her training and what she’s been taught about the Law of Thirds. (In some ways, going back to my post about Resistance, this is very Gurdjeffian.)
She explained after a particularly bad day of running, her Olympic coach said: “When you’re chasing a dream or doing anything hard, you’re meant to feel good a third of the time. Okay a third of the time. And crappy a third of the time. And if the ratio is roughly in that range, you’re doing fine. So today was the crappy day along your dream chasing. And if the ratio is off and you feel good all the time, or bad all the time, then you have to look at that: You’re fatiguing or you’re not trying hard enough.”
This holds for writing a book, too; It’s hard, often. But that’s what makes it a dream worth chasing. And if it’s not pushing you to the point of defeat, it’s not a big enough dream.