On Novel Revision and My Research Endeavors

When is revision too much? For me, it may always be too much.

Every time I sit down to work on my novel, progress becomes locked in a grid of "what if?" I seek to network the needs of varying audiences, themes, missions, plots, agendas, social requirements. Any complication I can think of will halt the writing process. I have to plan to work everything in.

Twice I have made an overhaul of this novel, revising it entirely with something foundational molded anew or scrapped and replaced. First, I erased my main character because she was hollow. In her stead two male characters have arisen. Their rough outlines were taken from a short story I wrote for a class, but in the course of the narrative they grew into two human beings who I know intimately. They were not a plan. They were organically born and as I wrote I got to know them.

Lately, this organic approach to writing has shriveled. My second major revision is to make this novel a rhetorical opening out. A gateway to understanding and acceptance of a variety of viewpoints, but my own is so narrow. Needing to know more, I research and research and research. I have lengthy lists of books to read to help me fully develop the themes I want to ecapsulate and develop real characters to create those themes where my personal experieince will fail me. This is a daunting task.

I intended to finish my novel by the end of 2012, but after developing a research plan, I decided it would be more feasible to shoot for the end of 2015. Do I really need four extra years?

The answer is no. I've got to stop. Simplicity is needed.

I'm currently reading Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. I just finished the chapter "Black Matters." At first, I thought I should, as a writer, do what Morrison describes as "entering what one is estranged from." This was already a goal of my writing, but as I continued reading, it became clear that I should limit myself to alien things closer to home--to experiences of alienation that, though not my own, I have at least been witness to and can begin to imagine. Empathy is a natural trait for writers in my opinion. It lets them easily jump into the lives of others and live the experience. Morrison is surprised by some of the successful capturing of perspectives that are other than the authors she encounters.

I felt sure that somewhere in "Black Matters" I would find the key to what I want to do, but I think I perhaps found the key to what not to do. Through the course of this piece, Morrison recognizes that in engaging with the Other, a writer may reinforce prejudices. I was quick to think, "I don't want to do that! Lead me on to the path of avoiding this affront," but Morrison didn't. The issue is complicated. In a nutshell, Morrison clarifies that the risk of working to undermine prejudices also inherently carries with it the liklihood of inauthenticity.

How does a person successfully undermine a problematic system when the system is in part a key to authenticity? Furthermore, how does a person create true authenticity in narrative when the system is foreign. It's not just a matter of character. Is there any way I can organically imagine an Othered character and the complex background they would arise from the way I can my two heroes? Could I intimately know such a character and how they would react in any given circumstance? I don't think so.

If I tried, I would fail. I should point out that Morrison is appreciative of such failures. Though they are indeed failures and subject to criticism, she recognizes that the act of such a writing endeavor is a brave and worthy cause for the mind of the author if no one else. I think I will continue such exercises of the mind, but for now, I will leave them out of my writing--or at least writing I intend to share. This novel project is simplifying to concentrate on issues I know that I can write naturally without a concerted effort to try to work beyond the limits of my own imagination. I'm not ready for that.