A favorite revision question, a wave of divergent writing possibilities

Experimentation = contrast = feedback = curious practice

A string of drafts and what ifs on the way to an essay called “What the Body Knows.” It started as a handful of poems, because I was resisting essays at the time. (I often have to ask “what if” about form just as much as anything else.)

for today’s letter… What if? A question that gives free feedback. The Great Big Whys vs. the down-to-earth hows (or, ruminating vs. practicing). What’s your favorite question when writing?

for a future letter… Punctuating divergent thinking. Making space for the muchness. Spiral-drafting with your raw material and a neurodivergent mind. (I’m noodling and drafting on all these, so if one calls out to you, leave a comment to let me know.)

My favorite revision phrase/posture/question is what if? Those two words hum at the root of almost every creative practice I try. It’s a divergent question—not just because it opens toward all kinds of answers, but because of how it puts curiosity (instead of productivity, instead of perfection) at the center of creating. It’s not a straight-line-to-the-finish question.

(Sometimes I hear the waves on Lake Michigan as a thrum of what if, what if, what if. Water understands this.)

What if has a way of un-daunting the creative process: What if I moved this scene to the beginning of the story? What if the speaker refuses to hide in this spot? What if I repeated this sound? What if this image was the only thing that mattered in this piece? What if I removed the last section and just let this essay rest, not so tightly resolved?

Each of these says: Try me. Try me and notice what happens next.

I like the challenge in that, and the curiosity. I like the way it helps me stop thinking about what everything is supposed to mean (the Great Big Why) and get into how things actually work, in the story and on the page. (I wonder if the Great Big Whys only show up as we devote ourselves to the more down-to-earth hows.)

What if is the call-and-response of revision, the little tug in your chest when you know you haven’t been honest enough yet but you’re not sure where to start.

What if says: Just try a response. Any response to this possibility. Write, and you’ll have more to listen to, more to imagine with, more to tinker with.

What if is free feedback. What if creates contrast. Wherever we try something—especially something specific—in the writing, there’s a before and an after. There’s a change in state. And what we notice through that change becomes feedback.

Right now I’m trying out a perspective shift for my next book, a memoir-in-essays. For a long while, I’ve been developing the book with a mix of first and third person.

I was all in on this as a creative direction for the project, but as I’ve lived with it/in it longer, I’ve wondered if it’s still serving the material like I’d imagined. What am I after in these different perspectives? Why does the distance of third person matter to me? Is it enough to carry through the whole book?

(Maybe it’s just me, but this kind of creative rumination is so seductive: Look how it dresses like feedback. Notice how serious it sounds! And then look again, because it’s actually just me slipping toward complete doubt in the project.)

I know I need to go back to what works: What if?

What if I try the book without the perspective shift?

What if I retype all the third person parts into first person, to see how they feel?

I don’t know why this will or won’t work. I don’t know “why” at all right now. I only know the how. I go back to what works. I go back to writing.

I need to write the version that creates new contrast for me, because that contrast will give me more feedback. So I’ll go back and try some key parts in first person. I’ll start with something small, maybe one of the flash essays that’s currently in third person, and I’ll make the switch. I’ll compare the two options. I’ll especially pay attention to how my fingers feel as I type… there’s something tactile about it to me sometimes, as if my hands know better than my mind about what feels true to the project.

Feedback-spirited questions I like to play with in the wake of what if:

• Did this experiment lead to new material, new memories, or new language showing up? (Generativity is a good sign. I’m a big fan of moving towards the more-ness and the much-ness.)

• How did this experiment surprise me? Was there a specific spot, word, or technique that created surprise, for better or worse? (For me, surprise emotion tends to signal that I’m moving toward something the writing needs. Similarly, if resistance is the surprise, that can point to what I’ve been avoiding in a piece.)

• What’s one thing I know about the material now that I didn’t before trying this out? (No need to overthink… sometimes it’s as simple as: Oh yeah, I forgot about what she said at that party, glad that showed up.)

• What’s one thing I notice in my voice or style? What qualities are in this writing that weren’t present (or as obvious) in the writing before? Do I love it, hate it, need more time with it? (You might find your next what if in this space… I try to keep spiraling into practice, led by this feedback, instead of kicking back out into abstract thinking.)

What if is also the kind of question that helps with creative recovery. I’ve come far with the next book now, and I’m feeling stretched. Stretched in good ways, and fatigued in other ways. This is exactly the space where self-doubt and silly mistakes can take a project off-course: you get tired, you get out-of-tune with the story, you make broad assessments or assumptions, you start cutting bits and pieces that actually have life in them, and so on.

When I’m deep into the work and feeling it all too closely for too long, I tend to overtighten and overshine. The writing can sound polished and sharp. But I’m not actually convinced I’m a knife. Parts of me are more linen than metal—why can’t I let my writing feel more wrinkled, more frayed?

If I carried that thought back to my project now, as a sort of blanket assumption about the work and my voice, I could have a field day of unwinding the whole thing. It’s another why question, for one, but it has also landed in a moment when I’m just tired enough and just distracted enough to let it run me around.

What if lets me continue to write, but on a more specific scale. It’s a right-sized question that returns me to a looser, exploratory relationship with the project. My guess is that’s why these kinds of experiments can feel restorative during the long work with a book-length project—they are specific enough to be meaningful and small enough to be manageable.

I’d really love to know what question tends to be your favorite when writing, especially when revising. Or if not your favorite, maybe the one that haunts you a bit or challenges you. Or the one you hated when it first showed up but actually found useful in the end (working with the questions we resist is probably worthy of its own letter, ha).