Excavation
June 21, 2007 by Dina
Filed under Dina\'s Blog
So much of writing is like excavation. Digging deeper, deeper and deeper. I don’t get past the surface of things until my 4th or 5th revision–and that’s if I’m lucky. Before that everything is sketchy, skeletal. Likean archaeologist, I spend far too many hours sweltering in the heat and digging up nothing. Like an archaeologist, I’ve had to learn patience, and faith that eventually the story and the characters will emerge. As a New Yorker, patience has never been a virtue I cultivated as part of growing up. Reminding myself not to be satisfied, to look for ways to write something even better is a constant process.
I like the concrete metaphor. I use ‘sculpting’ for my work. The material (Oppen, The Materials) pours out as a piece, seemingly by itself. A large stone I have quarried out of…where? I sculpt it into submission, forcing it to be what it demands to be. Sometimes it comes out like Gaudier-Brzeska, sometimes like an overpass on the Gowanus Expressway. I usually reserve archaeology for the therapy sessions. As I understand it you have an MSW. True? I am also an MSW/MFA type. I live near New York but I’m strictly an out-of-town midwesterner. I’m not patient either, but sometimes it takes me fifteen years to finish a poem.