Playing with Revision
The more I revise and the more I help new writers learn to revise, the more I’m convinced that good revision, like any good writing, is essentially play. Robin Marantz Henig’s recent article in the New York Times , “Taking Play Seriously,” looks at recent scientific studies that ask, What is play’s role in the evolution of species? Of course there are many theories, but here is one from Patrick Bateson, a biologist at Cambridge University: “Play is the best way to reach certain goals. Through play, an individual avoids…the lure of ‘false endpoints.’ Players are having so much fun that they keep noodling away at a problem and might well arrive at something better than the first, good-enough solution.” First drafts are first, good-enough solutions. We adults are particularly prone to false endpoints because we like results and we like efficiency. With writing,…