Mindfulness For Writers Podcast #4: Revision

Revision doesn't have to be terrifying! I know for so many writers, this part of the process can be really intimidating. In my journey as a writer, I’ve come to find that the more I can get out of the way, the better the work is. As I like to tell my students and clients, “The book is the boss. I just work here.” This episode explores how we can get out of the way and revise our relationship to our Egos in order to come to the page when we're revising (or drafting) with expansiveness, openness, and curiosity. When we work from our Essential Selves--which we are able to access through training in meditation and mindfulness--we no longer work from a place of fear or expectation for ourselves or the work. We can be a blank page, ready to see what the work wants to be. In this episode, I get into some helpful strategies and talk a bit about how meditation saved me in my most recent revision. Be sure to check out the separate meditation that goes along with this so you can dive deeper!

Transcript

Hey everyone,

This is the Mindfulness for Writers podcast and I am Heather Demetrios.

I'm going to be talking to you today about revision.

So I know a lot of you probably come to the page with a lot of trepidation and fear in regards to this part of the process.

My hope is that this episode will give you a little bit more expansiveness and some strategies for how you can approach the page and have a little bit less fear,

A lot more curiosity,

A lot more flow and excitement about revising your work.

If you are not revising right now and you're drafting,

I still think everything that I'm going to be telling you is going to be of use,

So you can keep listening too.

A couple of things before I forget.

Make sure you head over to the Mindfulness for Writers website,

Mindfulnessforwriters.

Com.

There are a ton of resources on there for you,

Specifically for writers on using meditation and mindfulness to help you,

Not just in terms of navigating the ups and downs of the artistic life,

But also in terms of craft.

I have a lot of worksheets on there and I also have a huge revision checklist that you can download that will help you as you go through your revision.

Most of it is for fiction,

But some of it is for nonfiction.

To give you a little bit of a background on me,

I have six novels out and I have more coming out,

Including a biography,

So some nonfiction as well.

I am no stranger to revision.

Part of the reason I'm so excited to do this episode and to talk about revision is that revision has been such a huge part of my writing life,

Obviously,

Just as a writer who's written a lot of books,

But also because most recently I had a huge revision that I had to do.

I had to work through a lot of fear and expectation for that particular project to complete that revision.

I kind of feel like I've come on the other side of that and I want to sort of,

To get a little hero's journey with you,

To share the boon that I've brought back from that experience.

That's part of why I'm here today.

I recently came back from teaching a retreat on revision for writers and I'm going to be teaching a course on revision soon.

I'm just all about revision right now.

The focus of this particular talk today,

And there's going to be a meditation that goes with it as well,

That's a separate recording,

Is revising our relationship to our ego.

By ego I mean our sense of self,

Who we say we are,

The identity that we have constructed.

Part of that is the story we tell ourself about who we are,

Part of that is what society says we are,

Part of that is the labels,

Your political party,

Your religion,

Your gender,

All those different things.

All of the different kind of aspects of the story that we have of ourselves,

You might think like,

I'm invisible,

I'm unlovable,

Or I'm a really hard worker,

Or things always work out for me if I just keep trying,

Or whatever your stories are,

Right?

We bring all of that,

All of ourselves to the page every time that we sit down and write.

Sometimes that's of use,

Because of course a lot of ourselves show up in our stories,

But a lot of times that can really hinder us from getting to the heart of our stories.

It also creates a lot of footholds for our inner critics.

Today I'm going to be giving you some strategies,

Specifically with mindfulness and meditation,

For how we can work with the ego,

How we can create more expansiveness inside ourselves,

And what we can do to sort of banish some of the fears and doubt and uncertainty that often comes into the revision process for a lot of people.

Now,

For me,

I love revision.

I'm a huge nerd.

I think revision is the best part of the process.

I'm actually kind of terrified of drafting a little bit,

But I know a lot of writers see revision as the worst.

I'm hoping to bust some of the myths about revision for you,

And to kind of open up for you that this part of the process is actually really,

Really,

Really delicious,

And this is,

I think,

Where all the good stuff is.

So first of all,

When we consider the ego,

And to kind of set us up here,

While this is a secular lecture,

I often bring in a lot of concepts of Buddhist philosophy,

Because that is my come from in terms of meditation.

And so I'll be mentioning a couple of different things that are related to Buddhism,

But this is totally secular.

But those are really helpful concepts to kind of keep in mind.

So I'll just,

You know,

So you know.

So the ego is problematic for us for many reasons.

And I really love what Eckhart Tolle kind of talks about with the ego.

He calls it the burden of your personality.

And I think that is just such a great way of talking about the ego as a burden,

Because I think oftentimes we come to the page with this burden of our expectations,

Of who we think we are,

Of what we want for the book,

Of what we want for ourselves,

Of what we believe we're capable of or not capable of.

Obviously bringing in things about comparison,

Or you know,

If you do have a book that's under contract or something,

You know,

Maybe you have deadlines,

All of these different things,

Right?

We have all these burdens.

And it's impossible to write this way,

Because that's a lot of noise.

And Eckhart Tolle talks about,

He talks about this in terms of social media,

But you can use this for anything.

It's just clutter,

Right?

We've got a lot of clutter in our head.

And in order to create well,

We need flow,

Right?

We need expansiveness.

We need openness.

And that's why as a creative,

I'm so drawn to meditation,

Because I feel like it trains us in flow and attention,

And it gives us space with all the noise in our lives.

And it gives us that quiet that we need as writers to get the work done.

So Eckhart Tolle talks about being the presence and not the person.

So getting rid of the burden of your personality,

And instead homing in on what he calls,

Well,

I call it your essential self,

Right?

He calls it your essence.

And so when you have your essential self,

You are focusing in on the parts of you that are not the constructed identity.

So you're getting rid of all the ideas of who you think you are.

You're getting rid of,

So for me,

For example,

I would get rid of like my idea of,

You know,

Oh,

I'm an author,

And I've accomplished this,

Or I haven't accomplished that.

And I have this spiritual identity,

And I have this political affiliation,

And I have this nationality,

And I have this gender,

And I am married,

And I live here,

And I like my coffee this way,

And I have this,

And I have that,

And I have that.

I'm getting rid of all of that,

And I'm getting to the essence.

The essence is getting into this idea of our being.

So it's that part of you when you're meditating that is just extremely present,

When you are really focused just on the breath,

Or the feel of the sunlight on your face,

Where you are probably having thoughts because the mind thinks that's what it does.

So we're not trying to resist thought,

But we're just sort of accepting what's coming through our mind space,

Right?

But it's that part of you that's just sort of existing,

Not even like outside space and time,

It's just you.

That's your essential self.

That's when you're just being,

And that's where flow lives.

And so you could really get into the more like universal consciousness and all of that,

And you can go down that rabbit hole as much as you want.

I think that's really delicious,

But that's totally up to you.

But it's really about focusing on the being.

So Eckhart Tolle talks about how we are human beings.

So the human part of you is your ego,

Your identity,

The construct of the I,

Right?

I am Heather.

I am an author.

I am an American,

Right?

And then the being,

Which is just the feeling that I have when I see a sunset and I gasp,

Or the feeling I have when I hear a beautiful symphony,

Or when I am not in my head,

I'm in my body,

I'm fully embodied,

Right?

We've all had those moments,

And that's what we're going after.

We want it when we're drafting,

We want it when we're revising.

And meditation and mindfulness train us to access that state more and more and more.

So when we're trying to banish the ego,

A lot of writers freak out about that because it sounds like we're saying,

You know,

Don't bring any of yourself to the page.

And as a writer,

We think,

But wait,

Like,

I'm,

That is all I have.

That's my canvas and my brush and my paint and my everything,

Right?

Who I am,

My thoughts,

My feelings,

My everything,

Like that's what I'm bringing to my characters and my world and my ideas that I'm putting into my book.

And that's all good.

Like,

That's fine.

But what we're trying to not invite to the tea party is our expectation and our fear and our will that we want to impose on the story.

So I'm going to give you a little example.

So my most recent revision was for a really big fantasy project.

So I write a lot of different kinds of books.

I write contemporary,

I write fantasy,

I write historical fiction.

I'm working on a biography.

So I write all different kinds of stuff.

This was for a really big fantasy project.

And it's a project that I sold like three years ago.

And when I sold it,

I only sold it,

We call it on a partial.

So it was a few chapters and a synopsis and an outline,

Right?

So I thought I knew what the story was.

And my editor was like,

Cool,

This is great,

Let's do it.

And I was like,

Yay.

So I started working on the book.

And I finished a draft.

And for the first time in my life,

I finished a book and was feeling like it just wasn't working.

And by finished,

I mean like I'd revised it and I like gave it to my editor,

Finished,

Not just,

You know,

First draft finished.

And I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it.

She read it,

Had a lot of notes.

Basically for three years,

We went back and forth.

I tried so many different plots.

I tried so many different characters.

I changed the protagonist so much about her,

Her identity,

Everything.

I mean,

It was wild,

All the twists and turns that I went through with this book until finally I told her,

I can't write this book.

I can't write it.

I know I sold it to you,

But I can't write it.

And then about four or five months later,

The book came to me,

The whole book.

And I was like,

Yes.

So I started writing it.

And then what happened?

Oh my gosh,

I hit another wall.

I thought I figured the book out.

And yet again,

I hadn't figured it out.

I began to realize that I had imposed my ego and my will and my expectations on this book.

I wasn't letting the book be the boss.

Instead,

I was telling the book what I wanted it to be.

Now there are a lot of different theories about craft and writing.

My come from is that I write from a character centered perspective.

So all of my plotting,

All of my belief about how a book is written really comes from character.

I write a lot of genre fiction.

So it's not that all my books are very quiet,

Contemporary books.

So I recognize the importance of plots and twists and turns and all those things.

But for me,

I find that organically plotting from the character's desires and their misbeliefs,

I'm a big story genius fan,

The craft book,

Works the best.

So I realized I hadn't been taking my own advice and I had been imposing my will on the story.

So finally,

I started to really listen to what the story wanted.

And the revision finally came together.

But I really had to get my ego out of the way.

This book really broke me.

And it really taught me that I had grown way too cavalier about my approach to my writing.

I just thought like,

Hey,

Whatever,

I can do this.

And I didn't come to the page with the openness that I needed to come to the page with.

And so this revision really showed me how necessary it was to get the ego out of the way.

And what I came to realize is that the ego is a hungry ghost.

And I knew that already from my other studies in meditation and Buddhism.

But from a revision perspective,

It began to be really interesting to me,

This idea of the ego as a hungry ghost.

And in Buddhist philosophy,

Hungry ghosts are these demons that are constantly craving and they're looking everywhere to fill their hunger,

But they can never be satisfied.

And in our lives,

We are often hungry ghosts,

Right?

We look everywhere for satisfaction.

We think our careers,

Food,

Sex,

Relationships,

Material things,

We think these things will satisfy us.

But then we realize the hunger is still there,

Right?

There's always something more.

So for example,

I always thought if I could just publish one book,

That's all I need.

I'll be so happy.

Well,

I've published several books and I want more,

Right?

So the hunger is still there.

And if you know anything about Buddhist philosophy,

There's the Four Noble Truths,

Right?

So the first noble truth is that life is suffering.

But another way of looking about that is life is dissatisfaction.

Our main source of suffering is that we're dissatisfied.

And the Buddha says in Centre forase…"

Reviews

Just what I needed! 🙏

Great talk. Thank you for sharing your story so openly. More, please!

Excellent thank you so much 🙏🏽

Wonderful! I enjoyed hearing this . I write songs and poems and this was very helpful . I loved the references to Buddhism and Eckart Tolle. I will definitely check out your mindfulness for writers.com . Namaste 🙏🏼💫💕

I never really understood why rewriting was so difficult. It never occurred to me that ego was protecting my words to the point of rendering them dysfunctional and empty. I'm so grateful for this insight.