Revision (again)

Unlike life, revision presents the chance to make things over, correct errors, at the minimum, transform characters and erase events and create new ones, at the maximum. One might pray or beg or implore whatever forces exist in the universe for help, but in the end the writer himself, the writer herself, plays petty god and makes the changes and rearranges sequences, sections, chapters, beginnings, endings. For that responsibility the writer prepares, as Malamud once put it, as an actor prepares--studies the inward life and life outside the self, rehearses and rehearses, whispers, chants, sings, shouts, testing the voice, closes the eyes and opens them, hoping to see something new that may help this time around. As the poet Kenneth Fearing wrote, "Pause, and begin again..."
Revision--the essence of narrative art.
"--and begin again..."