“I love revision. It feels really magical when I see my manuscript getting better, when things are clicking into place and I’m getting closer to a finished product I’m really proud of. But it’s not magic. It’s work that can make it look, at the end, like it didn’t take much effort at all and the words came out exactly as they were meant to be.” -Chaitali Sen
This July, join us for our virtual 2024 Summer Writing Retreat featuring three classes on fiction, memoir, and revision, plus lots of special events throughout the month, including a Saturday Craft Seminar with Steve Almond (July 13), lunchtime craft presentations by notable authors, meet-ups with fellow writers, dedicated writing time, and our Student Reading Night.
Our revision class, taught by Chaitali Sen will focus on “Layering: A Strategic Approach to Revision.” This class is for those who hate revision or love it; those who have complete rough drafts they want to revise; those who are still working on a first draft but want to be prepared for what comes next; those who are a writer of fiction, memoir, or personal essays.
Here’s what Chaitali had to share with us:
Scribe: Tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you write? How did you come to writing?
Chaitali Sen: I am a child of immigrants. I moved to the US when I was two years old and English was my second language. It took me a while to understand English but by third grade I was hooked on reading, and I realized there was a way for me to channel my active imagination by writing my own stories. Writing became one of my favorite things to do even though it was so difficult. There are a lot of hard things I see other people do (gardening, for example) and I think – that’s really not for me – but somehow writing books is the hard thing that I do.
Scribe: You’re teaching the Revision class and are focusing on Layering: A Strategic Approach to Revision – can you tell us why you wanted to approach revision from this angle?
CS: I needed to come up with a strategic approach to revision about ten years ago because I wasn’t finding any good answers to how to revise when I was trying to tackle the big mess of a rough draft I had. I wanted an approach that made sense for different lengths and genres of work and that was more specific and purposeful than just putting the manuscript in a drawer and looking at it with fresh eyes. And what was I supposed to do with all the feedback? How was I supposed to know if I was making the right decisions? So through some trial and error and research I developed the layering approach that put some order on the process of revision.
Scribe: How does this topic resonate with your own work and your own development as a writer?
CS: I love revision. It feels really magical when I see my manuscript getting better, when things are clicking into place and I’m getting closer to a finished product I’m really proud of. But it’s not magic. It’s work that can make it look, at the end, like it didn’t take much effort at all and the words came out exactly as they were meant to be.
Scribe: Has there been a moment of epiphany in terms of your work, when you thought, “This is it! Now I know what I’m doing?” How long did that feeling last?
CS: I think writing is unlike other crafts in that every time you start a new project, you have to teach yourself how to do this all over again. Maybe every kind of composing is like that – I don’t know, but I think with stories, it’s not exactly a matter of accumulated skills and successes. A lot of times I really don’t know what I’m doing, but I know that I can figure it out, because I’ve done that before. But I think in writing, rookie mistakes will be part of the writing life whether you’re one year or twenty years in.
Scribe: What piece of advice do you find yourself giving to writers again and again?
CS: Shut out the outside voices. Write for yourself first and try to be fearless.
Scribe: How would you finish this sentence: If the students in my class take away one thing from the four weeks, I hope it’s:
CS: When it comes to revision, let your theme be your guiding star.
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Thanks, Chaitali!
Chaitali Sen is the author of the novel The Pathless Sky and the story collection A New Race of Men from Heaven, chosen by Danielle Evans as the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and one of Kirkus Reviews’ 100 Best Fiction Books of 2023. Her stories and essays have been published by American Short Fiction, Boulevard, Catapult, Colorado Review, Ecotone, and many other publications. She holds an MFA from Hunter College – City University of New York, and currently lives in Central Texas.
Click here to learn more about Chaitali Sen’s upcoming revision class during the 2024 Summer Writing Retreat.