230
WRITERS ON WRITING: HOW AND WHY WE WRITE
in relations
forward to still another, as I try to see each evolving line
every other line.
ten; this
is how I should have written it."
When does this process end? Most writers agree with the great Russia
writer Tolstoy, who said, "I scarcely ever reread my published wing,
by chance I come across a page, it always strikes me all this must be rew
to ignite new meaning. This article has been twice written all the way
The maker's eye is never satisfied, for each word has the potential
through the writing process.... Now it is to be republished in a bo
few small suggestions, and then I read it
maker's eye. Now it has been re-edited, re-revised, re-read, and re-re-edited
for each piece of writing to the writer is full of potential and alternatives.
A piece of writing is never finished. It is delivered to a deadline
and shame and pride and frustration. If only there were a couple more
out of the typewriter on demand, sent off with a sense of accomplishment
days, time for just another run at it, perhaps then....
The editors made
with
tort
THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT THE READING
1. What are the essential differences between revising and editing: What types of
language concerns are dealt with at each stage? Why is it important to revise
before editing?
2. According to Murray, at what point(s) in the writing process do writers
become concerned about the individual words they are using? What do you
think Murray means when he says in paragraph 24 that "language leads [writ
.
ers) to meaning"
3. How does Murray define information and meaning (13-14)? Why is the dis-
tinction between the two terms important?
4. The phrase "the maker's eye" appears in Murray's title and in several places
throughout the essay. What do you suppose he means by this? Consider how
the maker's eye could be different from the reader's eye.
5. According to Murray, when is a piece of writing finished? What, for him, is the
function of deadlines
6. What does Murray see as the connection between reading and writing? How
does reading help the writer? What should writers be looking for in their
reading? What kinds of writing techniques or strategies does Murray use in
his essay? Why should we read a novel or magazine article differently than we
would a draft of one of our own essays?
7. According to Murray, writers look for information, meaning, audience, form,
structure, development, dimension, and voice in their drafts. What rationale
or logic do you see, if any, in the way Murray has ordered these items. Are
these the kinds of concerns you have when reading your drafts? Explain.
8. Murray notes that writers often reach a stage in their editing where they
read
aloud, "muttering or whispering to themselves, calling on the ear's experience
with language" (23)
. What exactly do you think writers are listening for when
The Maker's Eye: Revising
Your Own Manuscripts
DONALD M. MURRAY
In sch
writin
respo
own
page
chan
chair
read
published works include novels, short stories,
criti
oth
The
bot
writing for many years at the University of New Hampshire, la
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Donald M. Murray (1924-2006
mater. He served as an editor at Tine magazine, and he won the
Prize in 1954 for editorials that appeared in the Boston Globe.
Stories, poetry, and
RE
teachers of writing, like A Writer Teaches Writing: A
(1985), The Craft of Revision (1991), and Learning by
procese na (1982)
in which he explores aspects of the writing process. Write to Learn
ed., 2005), a textbook for college composition courses, is based on Man
ray's belief that writers learn to write by writing, by taking a piece of
writing through the whole process, from invention to revision. In the la
decades of his lifc, Murray produced a weekly column entitled "Now anh
Then" for the Baston Globe.
To the following essay, first published in the Writer in October 1973
and later revised for this text, Murray discusses the importance of revision
to the work of the writer. Most professional writers live by the maxim
that writing is rewriting." And to rewrite or revise effectively, we need to
become better readers of our own work, open to discovering new mean
ences of many writers to make a compelling argument for careful revising
and editing
po
as
w
ta
C
WRITING TO DISCOVER: Thinking back on your education to date, what dió
you think you had to do when teachers asked you to revise a piece of your writing
How did the request to revise make you feel? Write about your earliest memories
of revising some of your writing. What kinds of changes do you remember making
When students complete a first draft, they consider the job of writing
done-and their teachers too often agree. When professional writers
complete a first draft, they usually feel that they are at the start of the
writing process. When a draft is completed, the job of writing can begin.
That difference in attitude is the difference between amateur and
professional, inexperience and experience, journeyman and craftsman.
Peter F. Drucker, the prolific business writer, calls his first draft "the zero
draft" – after that he can start counting. Most writers share the feeling
that the first draft, and all of those which follow, are opportunities to dis-
cover what they have to say and how best they can say it.
To produce a progression of drafts, each of which says more and says
it more clearly, the writer has to develop a special kind of reading skill.
226
DONALD M. MURRAY:The Maker's Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts
227
ght
ma
Zer
Or
),
.
of
Ft
5
as a
stranger. Not
Int school we are taught to decode what appears on the page as finished
writing. Writers, however, face a different category of possibility and
responsibility when they read their
page are never finished. Each can be job of writing can begin.
own drafts. To them the words on the When a draft is completed, the
changed and rearranged, can set off a
chain reaction of confusion or clarified meaning. This is a different kind of
reading which is possibly more difficult and certainly more exciting.
Writers must learn to be their own best enemy. They must accept the
criticism of others and be suspicious of it; they must accept the praise of
others and be even more suspicious of it. Writers cannot depend on others.
They must detach themselves from their own pages so that they can apply
both their caring and their craft to their own work.
posedly puts each manuscript away for a year to the day and then rereads it
many
We must read when Writers have the discipline or the time to do this.
our judgment may be at its worst, when we are close
to the euphoric moment of creation,
Then the writer, counsels novelist Nancy Hale, should be critical of
everything that seems to
most delightful in his style. He should excise
what he most admires, because he wouldn't thus admire it if he weren't...in
a sense protecting it from criticism." John Ciardi, the poet, adds, "The last
act of the writing must be to become one's own reader. It is, I suppose, a
schizophrenic process, to begin passionately and to end critically, to begin
hot and to end cold; and, more important to be passion-hot and critic-
cold at the same time.”
Most people think that the principal problem is that writers are too
proud of what they have written. Actually, a greater problem for most
professional writers is one shared by the majority of students. They are
overly critical think everything is dreadful, tear up page after page, never
complete a draft, see the task as hopeless.
The writer must learn to read critically but constructively, to cut what
is bad, to reveal what is good. Eleanor Estes, the children's book author,
explains: "The writer must survey his work critically, coolly, as though he were
a stranger to it. He must be willing to prune, expertly and hard-heartedly. At
the end of each revision, a manuscript may look... worked over, torn apart,
pinned together, added to deleted from, words changed and words changed
back. Yet the book must maintain its original freshness and spontaneity."
Most readers underestimate the amount of rewriting it usually takes to
produce spontaneous reading. This is a great disadvantage to the student
writer, who sees only a finished product
and never watches the craftsman
who takes the necessary step back, studies the work carefully, returns to the
task, steps back, returns, steps back, again and again. Anthony Burgess, one
of the most prolific writers in the English-speaking world, admits, "I might
revise a page twenty times." Roald Dahl, the popular children's writer,
WRITERS ON WRITING: HOW AND WHY WE WRITE
228
is essentially rewriting. I am positive of this.
As
questie
among
subtra
Pri
F
which
autho
glues
mark
a large
the time in rereading their own work.
close
theit
cach
spac
gua
stru
the
or
D
ey
been reread and altered and corrected at least 150 times.... Good wym
states, "By the time I'm nearing the end of a story, the first part will be
simply something that most writers find they have to do to discover who
Rewriting isn't virtuous. It isn't something that ought to be done.
they have to say and how to say it. It is a condition of the writer's life.
marily because they have the capacity and experience to create and review
There are, however, a few writers who do little formal rewriting,
number of invisible drafts in their minds before they approach the
page. And some writers slowly produce finished pages, performing all the
tasks of revision simultaneously, page by page, rather than draft by draft
But it is still possible to see the sequence followed by most writers mi
Most writers scan their drafts first, reading as quickly as possible to
catch the larger problems of subject and form, and then move in close
and closer as they read and write, reread and rewrite.
The first thing writers look for in their drafts is information. They
know that a good piece of writing is built from specific, accurate, and
interesting information. The writer must have an abundance of informa
tion from which to construct a readable piece of writing,
Next writers look for meaning in the information. The specifics muse
build to a pattern of significance. Each piece of specific information must
carry the reader toward meaning.
Writers reading their own drafts are aware of audience. They put them.
selves in the reader's situation and make sure that they deliver information
which a reader wants to know or needs to know in a manner which is easily
digested. Writers try to be sure that they anticipate and answer the questions
a critical reader will ask when reading the piece of writing.
Writers make sure that the form is appropriate to the subject and the
audience. Form, or genre, is the vehicle which carries meaning to the
reader, but form cannot be selected until the writer has adequate informa-
tion to discover its significance and an audience which needs or wants that
meaning
Once writers are sure the form is appropriate, they must then look at
the structure, the order of what they have written. Good writing is built on
a solid framework of logic, argument, narrative, or motivation which runs
through the entire piece of writing and holds it together. This is the time
when many writers find it most effective to outline as a way of visualizing
the hidden spine by which the piece of writing is supported.
The element on which writers may spend a majority of their time is
development. Each section of a piece of writing must be adequately devel
oped. It must give readers enough information so that they are satisfied.
How much information is enough? That's
garlic belongs in a salad. It must be done to taste, but most beginning
difficult as asking how much
writers underdevelop, underestimating the reader's hunger for information.
ru
tc
a
1
ve
8
it
5
10
DONALD M. MURRAY: The Maker's Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts
229
As writers solve development problems, they often have to consider
among all the parts of the piece of writing. There is a continual process of
questions of dimension. There must be a pleasing and effective proportion
subtracting and adding to keep the piece of writing in balance.
Finally, writers have to listen to their own voices. Voice is the force 20
which drives a piece of writing forward. It is an expression of the writer's
authority and concern. It is what is between the words on the page, what
glues the piece of writing together. A good piece of writing is always
marked by a consistent, individual voice.
space
to wo
guage
As writers read and reread, write and rewrite, they move closer and
closer to the page until they are doing line-by-line editing. Writers read
their own pages with infinite care. Each sentence, each line, each clause,
each phrase, each word, each mark of punctuation, each section of white
between the type has to contribute to the clarification of meaning.
Slowly the writer moves from word to word, looking through lan-
to see the subject. As a word is changed, cut, or added, as a con-
struction is rearranged, all the words used before that moment and all
those that follow that moment must be considered and reconsidered.
Writers often read aloud at this stage of t
of the
editing process, muttering
or whispering to themselves, calling on the ear's experience with language.
Does this sound right-or that? Writers edit, shifting back and forth from
eye to page to ear to page. I find I must do this careful editing in short
runs, no more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch, or I become
too kind with myself. I begin to see what I hope is on the page, not what
actually is on the page.
This sounds tedious if you haven't done but actually it is fun. Mak-
ing something right is immensely satisfying, for writers begin to learn
what they are writing about by writing. Language leads them to meaning,
and there is the joy of discovery, of understanding, of making meaning
clear as the writer employs the technical skills of language.
Words have double meanings, even triple and quadruple meanings. 25
Each word has its own potential of connotation and denotation. And
when writers rub one word against the other, they are often rewarded
with a sudden insight, an unexpected clarification.
The maker's eye moves back and forth from word to phrase to sen-
tence to paragraph to sentence to phrase to word. The maker's eye sees the
need for variety and balance, for a firmer structure, for a more appropriate
form. It peers into the interior of the paragraph, looking for coherence,
unity, and emphasis, which make meaning clear.
I learned something about this process when my first bifocals were
prescribed. I had ordered a larger section of the reading portion of
the glass because of my work, but even so, I could not contain my
eyes within this new limit of vision. And I still find myself taking off
my glasses and bending my nose toward the page, for my eyes uncon-
sciously flick back and forth across the page, back to another page,
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