A traditional model of writing usually proposes that there are two modes of writing: drafting and revising. I more or less reluctantly stand with the traditionalists here, though in my teaching I tend to see them not as separate elements—and certainly not as separate right/left functions of the brain—but as marks on a broad continuum of creativity, marks that are sometimes quite close together and are always connected through the text on the screen or page and through the mind of the writer. The unity of this connection ultimately (and ideally) leads to the successful completion of a text, word by crossed-out word, deleted sentence and replaced sentence, paragraph, page.
When I was first teaching, I referred to these two states as “Discovery and Exploitation.” But about halfway through my second semester teaching Intro to Creative Writing, I began to have doubts about my terminology. I started imagining shiploads of “discovering” conquistadors coming ashore in Mexico and wiping out the indigenous people. Or toxic open-pit copper mines in Montana. Not something I wanted to associate with writing. Also, “discovery,” whether it’s the discovery of gravity or a star or a bacteria, is most times the identification of something that already exists. And the stories that my students were writing then—that you’re writing now, that I’m writing—are something new, unless we’re a pack of shameful plagiarists.
So I now refer to these phases of the creative process as Revelation and Realization.
When I was first teaching, I referred to these two states as “Discovery and Exploitation.” But about halfway through my second semester teaching Intro to Creative Writing, I began to have doubts about my terminology. I started imagining shiploads of “discovering” conquistadors coming ashore in Mexico and wiping out the indigenous people. Or toxic open-pit copper mines in Montana. Not something I wanted to associate with writing. Also, “discovery,” whether it’s the discovery of gravity or a star or a bacteria, is most times the identification of something that already exists. And the stories that my students were writing then—that you’re writing now, that I’m writing—are something new, unless we’re a pack of shameful plagiarists.
So I now refer to these phases of the creative process as Revelation and Realization.
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