I once told my teacher Harry Crews that I liked to write, but I didn’t like to rewrite. I’d never had anything published other than a few articles in a school newspaper. I was a naked little hatchling when it came to creative writing. Harry scowled at me, took a sip of his tall boy, and then put the can back in the bottom drawer of his desk.

“Ms. MacEnulty, the real writing only happens after the first draft,” he said.  Because Harry was God, I changed my attitude about revising and rewriting that moment.

In an interview in the 1956 issue of the The Paris Review, Ernest Hemingway had the following conversation:

Interviewer: How much rewriting do you do?

Hemingway: It depends. I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, 39 times before I was satisfied.

Interviewer: Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?

Hemingway: Getting the words right.

Novelist Elisabeth Hyde, author of the wonderful book Crazy as Chocolate as well as several others, once told me, “Beginning a new novel is daunting because if it’s going to be anything like my others, the story line will evolve as I write. And if this means throwing out 10 pages or 1000 pages, so be it, if that’s what it takes to help me figure things out. I guess after going through this four other times (that includes the novel in the back of my file drawer), I’m comfortable – if resigned – to the fact that this is all part of the normal process of writing a novel.”

Generally,  your first draft is usually where you’re just finding out what it is you’re writing about. Anne Lamott advises writers to go ahead and write a “shitty first draft.” Give yourself permission in that first draft not to get it right. It may be that you know exactly what happens next and next and next. Great. Keep writing.

Don’t worry about the descriptions or the metaphors or even your spelling—especially your spelling. In fact, I suggest that you turn off your spellcheck and your grammar check. If there’s any way that you can permanently disable the grammar check on your computer, do so. It is an evil idiot that will lead you terribly astray. As for spelling, wait until you are completely done with the piece and then do a spell check.  But spell checking never replaces a good eyeball-proofing.

After the first draft, then the real work begins. Even though I actually enjoy revision now, I still have to trick myself into doing it sometimes. I will usually write the first draft of an essay or a story by hand. Then I revise it as I type it into the computer. Of course, there will be more revision after that, but a good chunk happens in that first typing. When I am writing a book, I will print a draft once I’m fairly happy with it, and then retype the entire thing to force myself to consider every word and every scene. When I wrote my screenplay, I had a couple of people read an early version. It wasn’t even quite finished. After listening to their feedback, I changed some things and finished the first draft. Then I printed up the first draft and had two friends read the entire script aloud with me. This step allowed me to hear the script and identify the things I didn’t like. And my readers gave me valuable feedback.

So revision is a process of getting feedback, of letting ideas simmer, and of looking at each sentence until you “get the words right.”

Practice

1. Get feedback from two to three people on something you’ve written. Choose one suggestion or question from each of them to address.
2. Take a piece you have written and retype it, changing words where appropriate.
3. If you don’t usually write by hand, try it sometime. It doesn’t work for everyone, but those of us who do it, swear by it.
4. Make a list of 20 of your favorite words. Use at least ten of them in a 250 to 300-word piece of writing.

One of the least popular exercises I do in my workshops is the Self-Portrait. I bring in hand mirrors (or sometimes we troop into the nearest bathroom and use the mirrors in there) and we write our self portraits. Nobody likes looking in the mirror for an extended period of time and really examining themselves. I know I don’t. And yet if we can’t examine our images, how can we examine our lives, our inner workings, our fears, our shadows? And if we can’t access those areas of ourselves, then vast territories of the human experience simply won’t be available to us. 

You’ve heard the expression, “the personal is political.” Sometimes we write because we feel strongly about what’s going on in the world. In fact, the most powerful writing, I believe, manages to be about larger ideas or issues as experienced on the microcosmic level. Charles Dickens wrote about poverty and class. But he did so through the experiences of individuals. 

The mirror exercise is the personal part of the equation. Who are we? Where are our scars? What are our flaws? What lies beneath our skin? What do our eyes tell the world? 

In a recent workshop, we first wrote our self-portraits. Then we wrote a rant about an issue that bothered us. Then we discussed the intersection between our personal lives and the larger issues we confront. This is a process, I believe: Finding the aspects of our stories that contain larger truths. It may take years. 

In the workshops, we write our responses in ten minutes. They’re not meant to be finished products, but it’s amazing what can come out in ten minutes.  

This is a 10-minute self portrait by writer Corie Dulkin:

To look straight ahead is a challenge

eyes stare at me with watery fatigue 

hair pulled back, begging for attention,

a cut, a color, or perhaps a wash

my skin tight against sharp bones

a meal or four forgotten — missed for time 

lips dry, split, and scarred from peeling

away the skin — a busy habit

the steady pulse beneath my neck is

beautiful — I am alive — I am life

my shoulder still damp from the sweet

toothy kiss of my littlest love 

my heart full from the warm good-bye 

of a man who holds me to the ground.

Practice:

1. You know what to do. Go look in the mirror. Really look at your face. What do the mouth, nose, skin, eyes, and bones tell the world about you? What do you see in your face? Who are you?
2. Write a ten-minute rant about anything that bothers you. It can be anything from road rage to world politics. Let it out. 
3. Look at your life. What challenges are you facing? Make a list. Explore each challenge to see if there are larger issues involved. When I wrote my memoir, part of the impetus of my writing was to explore how we treat the elderly in this country and how my generation should engage in discussions about aging and end-of-life concerns. 
4. Write yourself as a villain, using all your “bad” qualities. Then write yourself as a hero, using all your good qualities. Now let those two go at it. 

Wanted to let you all know about an upcoming writers retreat!

Dream It, Do it: Women’s Writing Retreat with Alice Osborn
Location: Bend of Ivy Lodge, Marshall, NC outside of Asheville, NC
3717 Bend of Ivy Rd. Marshall, NC 28753   www.bendofivylodge.com
Fri-Sun   August  23-25, 2013    Tuition: (Early Bird till April 30) $495, Reg $695, 
***Ask about the installment plan!—$125 per month for 5 months—***
Register Here: http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=wzy8uocab&oeidk=a07e6cpvied549bb69c   
Immerse yourself in a weekend of writing without interruption in the mountains of Western Carolina. This is your answer to, “I’ll write when I can find the time!” and fulfilling your purpose. Empowered women are powerful writers—grab your power so you can dream and accomplish your dreams of writing your story! Together over the course of this weekend, we’ll delve into our stories of defining moments, healing and self discovery. This is called “Living the Writing Life!”

Today is Easter Sunday. Easter is my favorite holiday. (Well, I love Halloween almost as much.) My childhood memories of Easter come shrouded in mist: sleepy mornings waking up while it was still dark to hunt for eggs in the house and then the thrill of finding the huge cellophane-wrapped basket full of untold treasures. I’d fill up on chocolate eggs and peeps. Then wearing a brand new dress complete with patent leather shoes and Easter hat, I’d go to church for the sunrise service with my mother. My mother was the organist at our large Episcopal church. Up in the balcony stood the towering state trumpet pipes, and at the end of the service, she’d wail on that organ and the state trumpets would triumphantly announce the resurrection of Christ. Outside, the church courtyard burst with purple, orange, and yellow flowers. After the service, we’d gather with all those other people for scrambled eggs and biscuits in the fellowship hall like one giant family.

Later when I was in my early 20s, I had the most significant spiritual experience of my life in a Baptist church in Ocala, Florida on an Easter Sunday. I am not a Baptist, but that moment shaped the rest of my life and put me on a quest for transformation. In a sense I was resurrected out of my own darkness into a new life.

The idea of resurrection and rebirth has deep roots in the human psyche. How can it not when we witness it in nature every year? And Easter, of course, is more than a Christian holiday. The name derives, according to an 8th century Christian scholar, from the Northern European goddess Ostara or Eostre (whence we get the name for the hormone estrogen). She was the great Mother Goddess, goddess of fertility, goddess of spring, and the goddess of dawn.

A friend of mine got interested in the origin of the Easter Bunny and shared the story she found with our study group. According to legend, Ostara, the Germanic Goddess of Dawn, found a little bird with frozen wings who was dying. Ostara saved his life and turned him into a snow hare. Since it had once been a bird, the hare was able to lay eggs, which it would decorate as gifts for the goddess.

This time of year can inspire us in our transformative writing practice. Here are some prompts to consider:

1. We cannot have rebirth without death. Perhaps this would be a good time to reflect on any one you have lost in the past few months — or any aspects of yourself you may have shed.

2. One of my students recently wrote about the giant Easter egg hunt on her grandparents’ land, attended by hundreds of friends and family. What rituals were a part of your childhood? Did your family celebrate Easter or Passover? Maybe not. There’s a story there as well.

3. Write a myth of your own. Have fun with it. Create new creatures with strange powers. Write the story of your transformation as a legend.

4. Be reborn. Give yourself a pseudonym and write a poem or a short prose piece in a completely different style from the way you usually write. Or write about an incident or a topic you would never share under your real name.

5. Have you ever had a powerful spiritual experience? Or maybe just an inkling that there was more to this life than the reality we know with our five sense. Describe the experience. No need to explain it.

We had a dreaded day of meetings at my school recently. For some reason, my colleague Bill and I sat in the back and started exhorting each other to live in the moment. The past doesn’t exist! we insisted. The future will never exist! There is only here and now. We were riffing on that old cliche about being in the now. But cliches become cliches because there’s usually some truth to them. No getting around it: There is only here and now because it’s always here and now. As Ram Dass told us in the 60’s: Be here now.

So what does that mean for writers? Without the past, what would we have to write about? And without imagining our future readers, for whom would we write? [Does that sound ridiculously clunky?] And yet “be here now” is crucial advice for writers. Writers are those on whom, as Henry James put it, nothing is lost. Writers pay attention to the here and now so that they can write about it later.

Some of my students and I went to see a play reading Friday night at the Light Factory. The Light Factory is a wonderful gallery in Uptown Charlotte that features photographs. Their current exhibit is about social media. The play that the actors were reading was called The Social Networth by Stacey Rose.

Before the reading began, I wandered around and looked at the pictures. One set of pictures showed women doing their exhibitionist best to look naughty and ragged and somehow interesting. Another set had no people in the pictures. They were pictures of places where people had tweeted something. The photographer had used geo-location to find these places. The tweets were anonymous.

I found myself captivated by a photo of an old motel about ten steps down from Days Inn, painted turquoise with an old red car in front. The tweet read: “Should I wait for you? Is it worth it.” Now, there’s a story there, I thought. The past enriches the present. Or you could say that through art one person’s past becomes another person’s present.

And then there was the play. We were encouraged to tweet during the play, which was about people who had no real lives only virtual lives and people who had no souls (bullies). It was about how we’ve become more and less connected through this strange and fascinating pastime of Facebook, Twitter, and so on. The playwright explored the strange manifestations of old themes: heartbreak and loneliness, our hunger for friendship and acceptance. One of my students wrote some interesting tweets — about snuggies.

After the play, I walked home through the city. The night was balmy. People were out enjoying the beginning of spring. The sky was a velvety-blue, and Charlotte’s buildings glowed in reds, oranges, and purples. Every step I took filled me with gratitude. Finally, the winter gloves were off, and I was more than happy to be here now.

This week’s prompts:

1. Enjoy the weather! Go outside and take a walk. Write about what you see, what you hear, how the air feels on your skin. Be one on whom nothing is lost.
2. Find a natural object. I recently took my shell collection to a workshop and we spent ten minutes writing about our shells. It’s amazing how much you can write if you just pay attention.
3. Write about the past. Recreate it. Begin with the words: I remember . . .
4. Write about your life online. Tell a story about a friendship made or lost over the Internet.
5. Be here now. Look around you. Record everything you see, pay careful attention to sounds and smells. Eavesdrop! What are people saying?