I wish I could remember who said this phrase, which has long lived in the handwritten marginal notes of a favorite notebook: "As long as we try to be good, we cannot revise."
While the phrase's origin is lost to time (unless you know and can tell me?), the context is not good versus bad, but good quality. In other words, if our aim is to write well while we are writing, revision — i.e., re-vision, to see again, anew, differently — won't be successful.
On the surface, the phrase doesn't make much sense. It sounds counterintuitive. Should we then aim to write poorly? To what end? So there's something to revise? What sense does that make? If we’re not aiming to write well in a first draft, then what’s the point?
But here’s the truth: when we’re busy trying to be good from the outset, we stifle potential and creativity.
I write a lot about editing and revising on the sentence by sentence, word by word level. I do not write about writing this way.
Real revision puts yourself in a position to assess the work anew and give it plenty of space to become something more. At its heart, it's developmental editing: a chance to ask the bigger questions: the drivers, the structure, themes and the like.
Re-vision. Look again. See again. Anew. What else? What instead?
Our stories — the real ones, the best ones — won't rise to the surface if we stay too concerned with writing a good draft.
A draft is just that: an exploration of one of many paths or shapes the piece could take shape. True revision opens up alternative, intentional options. Not (yet) to write something “good," but to reveal its truest expression.