Revision in action

On this blog, I talk about revision in general, conceptual terms all the time, but I thought you might like to see a concrete example.  Today I'll show you real-life "before and after" excerpts from a story I've published. The finished story, "Lunch with His Mother," appeared in the May-August 2008 issue of North American Review.

This story's earliest version was as the draft of a poem called "Cafe." It began this way:

"You ask me how I like your mother.
Your mother, with lipstick clotting in t