Contrary to what writers learn in writing workshops and MFA classes, there really is a single, secret ingredient to creating work that comes alive.
Along with the more obvious items in the recipe — basic literacy, paper and pen or laptop, an idea, motivation and stick-to-itiveness — without this one ingredient, nothing much happens. Sure, you might write a piece. It might be skillful, with a fresh voice and gripping plot and clever insights. Or not. It might be successful in others’ eyes. Or not. Your finished product might be a stack of effort filed under a bed or a self-published booklet circulating within your family or a packaged product gaining accolades in the marketplace, and still, without this element it will make no real difference in the world.
Maybe these ends satisfy you, but if not, read on. The secret ingredient that lends a creative work its spark, that makes of it a dynamic, engaging presence, is the writer’s willingness to be transformed. Or, to participate, if you prefer a more technical term, in revision.
“Writing is revision,” experienced writers often say. But what they really mean is that writing moves the writer, who keeps moving the work forward until it moves readers. Robert Frost said it more simply, “No tears for the writer, no tears for the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” Transformation is both our means and ends.
This is really good news, folks. It means that writing is fundamentally egalitarian. Each and every one of us who writes has the potential to move a reader deeply. Genuine engagement — what Minnesota’s literary matriarch Brenda Ueland called “interestingness,” other writers call passion or ache or curiosity, and I call open-heartedness — is foundational to a fruitful creative process. Have you ever sat through a memorial service at which a grieving grandchild read a coarse but genuine rendering of the departed one’s life and set everyone weeping? Have you ever received a card that touched you so profoundly you saved it for years? When I taught seventh grade, my struggling students floored me with their poetry; it was raw and real because they put their hearts into it and spoke the truth.
“Interestingness” comes naturally, if we let it. And it’s infectious. “The reader has a feeling and utters it from his true self,” Ueland teaches. “The reader reads it and is immediately infected … This is the whole secret of enchantment.”
Sure, literary skill, effort, a lively voice, a sharp wit, wild imagination, sheer talent and any number of other qualities increase the effectiveness of our writing. But they’re all gravy.
The meat-and-potatoes, the substance that feeds both writer and reader and without which there is no meal, is an open heart. Why? Because when our heart is open, we’re open to change. Re-vise, re-spect, see again: Revision is the humility to receive what we’ve seen and represent it anew on the page. It’s also the willingness to change how we see, the patience to look again, and again, and again; it’s the fortitude to honor something, anything, beyond ourselves with sustained attention.
Writing is revision when the writer is revised. The teenager eulogizing her grandfather revises a lived relationship into a written story. Because she’s put her heart into it, the writing process moves her; she’s changed for having written. Then, she revises again by reading it to others at a significant moment. The story becomes a living dynamic. The granddaughter becomes a spokesperson for a life and its loves. The audience witnesses these changes; we participate in them by remembering the departed and we see him with new eyes. We’re revised. Interestingness, open-heartedness, revision — they’re infectious in a way literary flourishes will never be.
Are you open to change? Are you open to changing your work? When writing is revision from the get-go, the whole process becomes a feast of transformative possibilities. We writers need this deep, sustainable nourishment, as does our hungry world.
Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew is the author of Swinging on the Garden Gate: A Memoir of Bisexuality & Spirit, now in its second edition; the novel Hannah, Delivered; a collection of personal essays, On the Threshold: Home, Hardwood, and Holiness; and three books on writing: Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir; Living Revision: A Writer’s Craft as Spiritual Practice, winner of the silver Nautilus Award; and The Release: Creativity and Freedom After the Writing is Done.
She is a founding member of The Eye of the Heart Center, where she teaches writing as a transformational practice and hosts an online writing community. You can learn more about Elizabeth at www.elizabethjarrettandrew.com and www.spiritualmemoir.com.
