UNK World Affairs Conference - Chris Abani

Author Chris Abani repeated the golden rule at his Tuesday morning session: Re-writing is the most important part of writing. However, rather than talking about drafting and re-drafting professional or academic writing, Dr. Abani told us a story.

A deadline was approaching fast and he had run out of things to clean, so he started looking through some boxes of his old material. He came across a 300 page novel that he had written, but didn't consider publishable - the story was stashed in a box for a reason. He took some time to read the novel, found a paragraph that struck him, and wrote an early draft of a successful novella.

I was awed by the fact that he wrote 300 pages, yet only used a paragraph of that piece to create a much shorter, much better story.

Personally, I am in the practice of being very concise in my writing and attempting to avoid mistakes so that I can spend less time editing. My own experience proves that those of us who procrastinate must practice writing habits that most teachers, and most writers, don't recommend.

Although I have always known that creating multiple drafts of a work is a good idea, Dr. Abani introduced the option of creating extensive drafts, cutting and cutting and cutting them down to something useful, and then expanding on the usefulness of a particular section.

Even when I have been required to write drafts for class, my early drafts are usually quite short and I only expand them enough to fit the page requirement. Up to this point, I have been starting at step 2 in Dr. Abani's process, but I have been cutting the material in my head before I give all of my ideas a chance.

I am curious to see what benefit my writing, both creative and academic, may reap if I start with a long, stream-of-consciousness style draft, cut it down to the size that I normally begin with, then build it back up. Dr. Abani made me see that there is a benefit to writing exessive amounts of junk: the more trash you have available to sort through, the more treasures you can find within it.