At my recent stay at Yaddo, I found myself reading about kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold lacquer. Once a piece is mended this way, the resulting golden cracks emphasize, rather than hide, the broken parts. The philosophy behind kintsugi suggests the flaws and breaks are part of a piece’s history and thus make it more beautiful than before.
Maybe it’s not surprising I felt drawn to kintsugi while deep in novel revisions at an artist colony. I wrote the first draft of my novel in 2012 and 2013, and ever since, I’ve been revising, shaping, rewriting. I’ve been cracking open what is already on the page to transform it into something new.
At Yaddo in particular, I made a conscious effort to wholly embrace the novel revision process. This is often easier said than done. My novel already represents so many revisions and layers of effort that it’s sometimes hard to imagine I can keep going. Plus, there’s always the fear of making a misstep and later having to undo all my work.
Novel revision is an extensive, ongoing process that takes more than patience and hard work. It takes faith, too.
Not long ago, for example, I was browsing some of my old photos on my computer when I found the folder of pictures I took at the Writers Omi residency in 2016. One of these photos confused me at first glance: its subject was a single blue post-it note adhered to the wooden beam at eye level in front of my residency writing desk. I had to zoom in to see what I’d apparently written on that post-it before hanging it in a prominent spot in my workspace.
It was a note to myself. It read: “It’s okay. I can make it better!”
As soon as I read those words, my reason for writing them came back to me, and I laughed.
During that residency, I was in the process of rewriting the latter half of my novel. Entirely rewriting it. I’d thrown out the second half the manuscript and was beginning fresh, and it was terrifying. I constantly second-guessed myself, wondering if I was changing too much and if the book would suffer as a result. If I could really stand to break what was already there.
I also knew, in middle of that rewrite, that the novel had a long way to go before it was ready. And yet there at the residency, I knew I needed to trust the process and keep going no matter what. If I had to leave a silly note to myself to embrace that process, I’d take it.
At Yaddo this year, I was in a more advanced stage of revision, but I still needed to move forward without trepidation. I had to be willing to go all out in revision, to break what was already made and turn the flaws into something beautiful. To fill the cracks with gold.