"Performing Surgery without Anesthesia" Response

          Revision has always been a terrifying process for me, one that I frequently shirk in favor of merely polishing minor errors. The initial feverish, intense process of creating a first draft is so creatively exhausting, it’s difficult to muster the energy to radically change your own creation. Another factor that makes “cruel and ruthless” objective revising difficult that Offutt didn’t discuss is the tendency to write autobiographical characters. Just as the writer makes herself vulnerable through the story as a whole, if she sees aspects of herself in the characters, they will be particularly difficult to view objectively. Realizing upon revision that a character based on aspects of the author’s life or personality is boring or whiny isn’t just tough for the revising process: it’s a blow to one’s own self esteem. 

Offutt dwells several times on recognizing what the story is, rather than what the writer intended or envisioned, and revising accordingly. This is where I think the group workshop process becomes most valuable, in gauging what the story really is from an objective rather than subjective eye. From my own experience in this class and others, workshopping a piece of mine brought out different perceptions and unexpected possibilities I had not envisioned or intended, at least not consciously, in my work. 

I do question, however, whether the revision process really makes a difference through dozens of drafts and many years, as Offutt says he has occasionally done. At that point, I think it’s possible the story will have been revised so much that it bears little resemblance at all to the original draft. That is not necessarily a bad thing, as the changes were probably positive, but I wonder if a story that is not “operational,” for lack of a better word, after 10 years is even worth salvaging.