A Piece Of Work: Five Writers Discuss Their Revisions [Paperback]

Jay Woodruff (Author)

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Writing is a process, and revising is less a separate activity from writing than a part of that process. True, there are those writers who claim that revision, for them, is a matter of dotting i's and crossing t's. But for most writers, it is the revising of a piece of work that is the most considered aspect of their art. In A Piece of Work, Jay Woodruff has interviewed five writers--Robert Coles, Tess Gallagher, Donald Hall, Joyce Carol Oates, and Tobias Wolff--about their revision processes. Included with each "interview" (I use quotes because the interviews themselves were subjected to the scrutiny of revision) is an example of the author's work--be it fiction, essay, or poetry--and copies of the drafts that preceded it. "I hoped," writes Woodruff in the book's introduction, "that focusing a lengthy discussion on a single piece of work might provide not only a sense of a given writer's general aesthetic but also a greater incidence of the specific examples that enable the reader to see how good writing becomes better."

Joyce Carol Oates claims to love revising, but she clearly doesn't love to talk about it; still, her many drafts offer great insight into her process. Tobias Wolff doesn't save his drafts ("They embarrass me"), but he is happy to talk about them, while Tess Gallagher is not at all self-conscious about the path to a finished piece: "We start out in these very awkward ways, and we do look a little stupid as we draft," she says, "and that's all right." Implicit in this book is the arrival, sometime, at a finished work, but there isn't always such a thing. "Every draft is a final draft, after a while," says Donald Hall. "But I know from experience that I will probably keep on tinkering." --Jane Steinberg

Product Details

• Paperback: 285 pages
• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press; 1 edition (May 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0877454094
• ISBN-13: 978-0877454090
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #894,656 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading, April 10, 2000

By 

Lisa Schweitzer - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Piece Of Work: Five Writers Discuss Their Revisions (Paperback)

Revising is the key to good writing, at least it is for me. This book is an attempt to trace how several reknowned authors make revisions on their own work. The lesson I took away from the book was that authors rewrite many, many times and work through a highly individualized process to discover a process that works. That is a worthwhile message, and I did leave the book with some ideas to try.

Unfortunately, the book is quite uneven in that not every author seemed particularly willing to share their process. For instance, I left the section with Joyce Carol Oates wondering why Woodruff bothered included it; plainly, getting information from her was tantamount to pulling teeth and the result is superficial.