In a Dream I Found a Way to Revise

The Ritual

My office is a large room in the front of my house painted deep blue. I sit at a wooden and black leather-topped desk with two movie posters watching over me (Sinners and Labyrinth). To my right is a flimsy desk lamp that keeps falling off and breaking, a candle, a smooth rock, a picture of my son—and on the windowsill, I’ve jerry-rigged a small bulletin board tacked with notes written on hotel stationary.

They’re notes about my book-in-progress. And this is what I’m doing now. I’ve written out these notes, all questions about my next novel, and hung them where I can see them. Where I can’t escape my own thoughts.

This is my secret—and my ritual.

One of the definitions of an artist is someone who keeps changing. And I think the same may be said of an artist’s process. I mostly, but not always, draft on my computer. Sometimes I write by hand, in various notebooks I worry about losing. For a while, I wrote in public, needing that invisible social pressure. I also keep a draft in my email of ideas I have when I’m working on a project, when I can’t stop to start something new, but both don’t want to be derailed and don’t want to lose the new idea.

These are various ways to start. But once I’ve started, once I’ve finished the first draft, I have the revision down to a science. Or maybe, the opposite of that, because for me it is superstitious.

I have the revision down to a ritual.