Session Ten · Unit III — Memoir
Revision — How Writers Actually Re-See
Sunday, July 19, 2026
Handouts & Worksheets
Main Points of the Lesson
- Revision is not editing. Editing fixes sentences. Revision re-sees the whole.
- The early draft is for the writer. The middle draft is where the writer learns what the piece actually is. The late draft is for the reader.
- A four-pass sequence: read for boredom/confusion/interest → structure → scene-by-scene → sentences.
- Most writers reverse the order — start with sentences, never reach structure. The result is a polished surface over an unstable foundation.
- The discipline of cutting: cut by 25%, then another 25%, and notice what survives.
Reading for Class — Click to Open
- Sherwood Anderson, “Death in the Woods” — read full story (public domain). Anderson was Hemingway’s teacher and Raymond Carver’s acknowledged foundation. This story explicitly turns on revision: the narrator tells the same story twice, each time finding more of what the story actually is. It is one of the great meditations on re-seeing.
After Our Discussion — Critical Reception
- Biblioklept on Sherwood Anderson’s “Death in the Woods” — close reading
- Walden — Background (Wikipedia) — Historical context, structure, and reception of Thoreau’s book.
In-Class Practice
Take a single page you have written for this course. Cut it by 25%. Then cut another 25%. We’ll discuss what survived — and why.
What happens with this: stays in your notebook. Two or three volunteers may share what the cut taught them — what they lost, what they were surprised to keep. The page itself is yours; nothing is collected.
Discussion Questions
- What is the difference between editing and revision in your own working practice?
- In Anderson’s “Death in the Woods,” the narrator tells the same story twice. What changes the second time? What does the re-telling reveal that the first telling could not?
- What is the hardest thing about cutting? Where do you resist?
- If you read your draft tomorrow, what would you give yourself permission to remove?
Homework
- Read the second chapter of Thoreau’s Walden — “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” — linked in the Farewell box below. Read it slowly. It is the closing text of our course.
- Bring one sentence to next Sunday’s Farewell — any sentence, from anything you wrote during the ten weeks. Just one. We will go around the circle.
Before Next Sunday — Farewell
The Writing Life. Our closing meditation. We read Thoreau together — the most famous American sentence about choosing a life — and each of us reads aloud one sentence from anything we wrote during the course. Coffee or tea if we can arrange it. A slow ending.
Four-Pass Revision Worksheet — for your private notebook
Copy into a Word document. Run a piece of your own writing through all four passes. This stays in your private notebook — never collected, never read aloud unless you choose.
- Pass 1: Read whole, aloud if possible. Where did I get bored? __________ Confused? __________ Interested? __________
- Pass 2 — Structure: Are the parts in the right order? What is missing? What is redundant? __________
- Pass 3 — Scene by scene: What can be cut? What needs more? __________
- Pass 4 — Sentences: Three sentences I can shorten: __________
- The Cut: Cut the piece by 25%. Then by another 25%. What survived? __________