In the writing process, I hedge on the verbose side. ‘Hedge’ is putting it lightly. I love words, especially choice quotations, and tend to over indulge. The more the better! (or so I wish) This perhaps reveals a tendency for gluttony in my personality, which I refuse to acknowledge directly, but since I too often write this way, I can hardly deny it directly either.
The problem is, however, that in argument-driven writing – which is the essence of a history thesis – the pouring in of words tends to dilute, if not drown, your argument. You yourself are confused at what just exactly it is you are trying to say, which means any reader you might win to the cognitively-dehydrating cause of reading your work (many apologies to my long-suffering supervisor) stands little chance of maintaining a sense of direction in the quagmire.
I face this issue constantly, in that ‘broken-record’, ‘vicious cycle’ kind of way. So, I find that it is useful (if not vital) for me to remind myself to ‘know your bones’. By this I mean that I need to examine the draft carefully and try to pull out the skeleton from the sinews of verbal flesh that have hidden it utterly from view.
This is a trying and painful process – as any extraction of a skeleton from a partially living thing would be. As you do so you discover that your writing is often deficient or over supplied in some of its marrow. You find out that you have somehow allowed three femurs to grow, while omitting a clavicle, and that means the spine of the whole thing is warped. Joints are out of joint, and many bones are thus incapable of supporting any life or movement. You wish suddenly you didn’t have this knowledge – ignorance is bliss – but now that you know, you have to go about further repair: killing some darlings (the repetitive femur components) while cultivating the growth of other elements. The latter is rather relatable the ‘growing pains’ we experienced in our physical bodies as kids – an invisible pain of slow transformation, persistently there, arriving without forewarning, but never quite within grasp, and certainly not within our full control.
The experience leaves you pretty hallowed out. At the moment, my literal eyes feel that they will literally melt out of their sockets (Is there a borderland between figurative and literal in the cognitive experience? Or do they both reside in a shared landscape?) I’m not sure if my brain has any discerning power left. I am also not sure if I will later, even tomorrow, look back at what I have written here and find evidence that I have irrevocably lost my mind in this go at a writing life.
But, after such an extraction, you have to get to the work of reconstruction. Your skeleton is exposed and visible, but ultimately lifeless when it stands as scattered ivory fragments. You need to reapply some rhetorical muscle, but must also be very intent this time to maintain some angularity. You have to still be able to see the vague impression of the bones, the sense of their undergirding silhouette beneath the fleshiness of diction, analysis, and compelling quotations.
You need to know your architecture, the twigs, branches, and trunk relationship that enable your ideas take up firm residence the canopy.
You need to know your bones.
“When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.”— Stephen King
forestry odyssey 