The Ethics of Revision
The Ethics of Revision
& the soul of writing
The Ten Conditions For Revision
1. All life is meaningful.
(Every moment is urgent: time is always new.)
2. Memory is selective and fallible.
(Your memories are organic in your brain; your memories are scratches in your cortex tissue. Your feelings are flashes of electric chemical reactions.)
3. There is inadequate language to convey even one real experience.
(There is only this language; this language is always abstract. Your burden is to find words that are the least abstract.)
4. Writing is the (immediate) memory of thinking.
(You do not write what you believe. You write to discover belief.
Belief is discovery, unless you already know everything you will know.
To discover belief, you must write about your observations and then organize them.
You organize your observations according to your subsequent interpretations of them.
During organization, you will search for patterns and then explain them.
Some patterns are more obvious than others.)
5. All life is connected.
(Everything in life—events, people, objects, and places—connects through infinite relationships. These relationships are the raw material for your discovery. You must show the connections that you believe exist by proving their relationships.)
6. You have an ethical obligation to discover your life in writing.
(The more specific you write about your life, the more your experiences become yours.
You must explain your life if you have the opportunity.
Revision is the acceleration of your discoveries about your life and beliefs.)
7. Writing wanders through information, like perceptions, observations, and interpretations, in order to discover relationships.
(Your writing emphasizes some information, but must consider all information possible.)
8. Writing shows the visible and invisible connections that define relationships.
(When you connect relationships by explaining observations and interpretations, you assert a belief.
A belief is never true. It is merely as true as possible: an informed, rationale fantasy.
One sentence can never be as true as a paragraph—and a paragraph can never be as true as ten paragraphs, and so on…
9. Writing is the science of relationships.
(Science proves the facts of relationships; it invents laws. Writing is potential science. Writing also explores the perceptions, politics, genealogies, emotions, and consequences of relationships.
Scholarship proves how different relationships have stories that can be written, remembered, and connected together.)
10. Your writing voice is the cumulative expression of identity.
(Your writing voice is a cousin of your speaking voice.
Your writing voice is different: it is created from layers of your thinking and speech.
It is always an expression of different versions of you. It changes because you change. Writing captures your self through time, at a moment.
Writing can never fully express you or your subject: You can only abandon a piece when it becomes impossible to find new and better words.
& the soul of writing
The Ten Conditions For Revision
1. All life is meaningful.
(Every moment is urgent: time is always new.)
2. Memory is selective and fallible.
(Your memories are organic in your brain; your memories are scratches in your cortex tissue. Your feelings are flashes of electric chemical reactions.)
3. There is inadequate language to convey even one real experience.
(There is only this language; this language is always abstract. Your burden is to find words that are the least abstract.)
4. Writing is the (immediate) memory of thinking.
(You do not write what you believe. You write to discover belief.
Belief is discovery, unless you already know everything you will know.
To discover belief, you must write about your observations and then organize them.
You organize your observations according to your subsequent interpretations of them.
During organization, you will search for patterns and then explain them.
Some patterns are more obvious than others.)
5. All life is connected.
(Everything in life—events, people, objects, and places—connects through infinite relationships. These relationships are the raw material for your discovery. You must show the connections that you believe exist by proving their relationships.)
6. You have an ethical obligation to discover your life in writing.
(The more specific you write about your life, the more your experiences become yours.
You must explain your life if you have the opportunity.
Revision is the acceleration of your discoveries about your life and beliefs.)
7. Writing wanders through information, like perceptions, observations, and interpretations, in order to discover relationships.
(Your writing emphasizes some information, but must consider all information possible.)
8. Writing shows the visible and invisible connections that define relationships.
(When you connect relationships by explaining observations and interpretations, you assert a belief.
A belief is never true. It is merely as true as possible: an informed, rationale fantasy.
One sentence can never be as true as a paragraph—and a paragraph can never be as true as ten paragraphs, and so on…
9. Writing is the science of relationships.
(Science proves the facts of relationships; it invents laws. Writing is potential science. Writing also explores the perceptions, politics, genealogies, emotions, and consequences of relationships.
Scholarship proves how different relationships have stories that can be written, remembered, and connected together.)
10. Your writing voice is the cumulative expression of identity.
(Your writing voice is a cousin of your speaking voice.
Your writing voice is different: it is created from layers of your thinking and speech.
It is always an expression of different versions of you. It changes because you change. Writing captures your self through time, at a moment.
Writing can never fully express you or your subject: You can only abandon a piece when it becomes impossible to find new and better words.
posted by Jrc at 4:00 PM
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