The Question of Revision.

Now that the span of daylight is almost as short as it’s going to be this year, I find myself feeling adrift between the closing of the curtains at around 4.30 and the extinguishing of the bedside light ten hours later.

If the wind is strong I listen to it howl. If the rain is falling copiously enough I listen to the trickling sounds in the downspout at the rear of the house. If the two are in alliance I listen to the taps on the window pane. If all is silence, I enjoy the rare commodity for its own sake. And in between the listening or the reverie I read.

Tonight I finished Henry James’s The Romance of Certain Old Clothes. It’s an entertaining little tale written in an infinitely more accessible style than the formidably dense The Turn of the Screw; and as someone who takes a more than passing interest in word craft, the style of writing is as important to me as the drawing of plot and character. And that’s why, having finished the James, I started reading my own novel, Odyssey, again.

I haven’t read it since I finished writing it over ten years ago and I wanted to get a feel of how someone coming to it cold might respond. I read the first chapter and had a few minor misgivings – nothing too serious, just the odd phrase and bit of construction here and there, and some punctuation which I now find injurious to the flow. Nevertheless, I considered the question of whether or not I should go to the effort of making some revisions.

I decided against it for two reasons: Firstly, because both I and the book are entirely unknown and I foresee no prospect of it ever being otherwise. Secondly, and more importantly, because the writing of it was a labour of love undertaken by the person I was over ten years ago (and I strongly suspected at the time that the writing of it was greatly influenced by an elevated personage not of this realm.) I’m not the same person now, so what right do I have to interfere with somebody else’s labour of love?

And then another question presented itself: Am I a better writer now than I was ten years ago? It’s a moot point, isn’t it? On the one hand we humans generally improve with practice. On the other, the judgement of quality is ever a matter of infinitely variable perception, however much the denizens of academe insist on drawing their lines, dreaming their speculations, and committing their rules to the academic statute. I think I am a better writer now, but am I really qualified to say?