So What is Revision? And Why Might it Be Important to Writing and Healing?

Here, by way of beginning, are 10 synonyms for the word revision, all found in my desktop thesaurus:

Reconsideration
Review
Reexamination
Reassessment
Reevaluation
Reappraisal
Rethink
Change
Alteration
Modification

When I look at the list I see a pattern:

Reconsideration
Review
Reexamination

Reassessment
Reevaluation
Reappraisal

Rethink

Change
Alteration
Modification

From looking again to reappraisal to rethinking—to transformation.

This, I think, is what can come, ultimately, out of the process of revision: transformation–a literal change in form.

And it has always seemed to me that going through this revision process in writing—and perhaps going through it over and over again—can point to what’s possible in healing.

One can look again—at the body itself—at an illness—at a loss—at a particular moment from one’s life. One can see what one perhaps couldn’t see when one was smack in the middle of it. One can, perhaps, see the value of something in a new way. And then—-something can change—–

The facts themselves may not change—they usually don’t. What changes, I think, is the way the facts get put together—and the meaning that gets attached to those facts.

E.M. Forster, in his book, Aspects of the Novel, describes the difference between a story and a plot.
A story: “The king died and then the queen died.”
A plot: “The king died, and then the queen died of grief.”

The facts don’t change in the second rendition. The king and queen still die. Those points—those events—remain unchanged. But the dots are now connected in a particular way. A particular meaning is attached. A theory. A hypothesis. (I mean no one but the queen really knows for sure, right? And she might not even know.)

Maybe that’s one of the key things that changes when we practice revision, and maybe that’s what makes the practice of revision especially important to healing: we can reconsider the plot. And we can change it.