The challenge of rewriting

To this day, one of my greatest triumphs as a writer came back when I was in college, even if no one other than myself and my professor knew about it. Come to think of it, he would have no idea what I went through, only that he gave the final product an A.

I was writing a paper for a class that combined film theory and literary theory, and I got off on completely the wrong track with it. It was one of two major papers for the term and I could not afford to screw it up.

After I'd written more than half of it -- probably at least 2,000 words -- I decided I needed to scrap my approach and start off with a new one. It was a radical move and it worked like gangbusters. Yep, I got that A. 

This stands out in my memory not because I got the A. I did get my fair share of those. Rather, it's because of how rarely I've done something like that. We writers -- many of us, anyway -- usually adhere to the sunk cost fallacy, which is that if we've already dedicated significant time and effort to something, we are very unlikely to change horses midstream. There comes a certain point where you are pot committed, to use another economic metaphor, and however it's going to be received, you have to continue along the course you've started. 

As a critic, I almost never rewrite anything. In fact, I am far more likely not to write the review at all if I think it's not going well -- something that's an easier choice since I am my own editor, and (usually) there is little consequence to aborting halfway through. I think of the review I tried to write for my favorite comedy (so far) of 2024, Jerry Seinfeld's Unfrosted, and how after about two paragraphs, I was not saying what I wanted to say. I think I did intend to ultimately shape it up into something publishable -- after all, two paragraphs is more like 400 words than 2,000 -- but time got away from me, as time does, and before long I'd missed my window.

When I am reviewing something I watched via a screener I got from a publicist, though, there is not the option to abandon it unpublished -- not if you intend to keep getting screeners from that publicist. This was the case with The Dead Don't Hurt, as you may remember from Monday's post, which also discussed how there was a major aspect of the film's structure that I did not understand while watching it. (I blame the distracted viewing of the Christmas season, especially as we are also preparing for a three-week trip to the States.)

As also discussed, I did watch the movie again, across Monday night and Tuesday afternoon, hoping to see just how much of a dunce I was to have missed this core aspect of the script, and hoping that I would just amend an author's note to the review I'd already written. 

After that viewing, in which the film climbed a half-star in my assessment -- and it might have been a full star if I still didn't sort of blame the film for not making this device clear enough to me -- I decided I liked it enough more that I owed it more than an author's note attached to a flawed review.

So I did indeed rewrite it, and that left me with the following question:

How do I actually do this?

I knew there were some observations in that review that I was still proud of, and the plot synopsis was mostly sturdy. But the connective tissue had a backhanded compliment, or even sometimes outright critical, aspect to it, and so I'd likely have to reword even within the passages that I thought were still relevant. 

So what I did was copy the whole thing into a new Word document, and just see where I went. 

I decided to incorporate the content of the proposed author's note into a new opening paragraph. I don't usually like to use the first person in my reviews -- I probably only include the word "I" in one of every ten reviews, and sometimes I might go six months without doing so -- but I thought this was a situation that called for it. Because not getting this essential thing about The Dead Don't Hurt was, in fact, relevant to the movie I had watched and reviewed the first time, and I thought my audience deserved to know about it, if only to prevent them from having to watch it twice to get all they could out of it. (Because if they didn't get all they could out of it, they'd never bother to watch it again.)

The confessional first part went simply, as writing in that mode comes pretty easily to me, given how much practice I get on this blog. It also allowed me to take the piss out of myself a little bit, which was warranted.

Then I transitioned into a modified version of my opening thoughts from my first review on the overall feel of the film. The plot synopsis survived mostly intact, though I chose to change certain things that might now be considered spoilers, given what I'd already said about the film's non-linear narrative. (That was the thing I didn't get. I know, I'm a dummy.)

The rest of the review needed to lose my references to certain things feeling abrupt, because that was no longer relevant -- or I no longer saw it as a weakness, anyway, now that I had an explanation. And that allowed me to replace that material with some thoughts on Viggo Mortensen's performance, which stood out to me a lot more on the second viewing, while still staying within 200 words of my original word count. 

The piece closed with comments that were exclusively positive, rather than the negative note of the previous one, even though both of the ratings had still been overall positive. (Incidentally, the movie also moved up more than 30 spots on my in-progress rankings of 2024 films.)

In the end, the task I had been dreading was accomplished entirely within the length of a 25-minute train ride home from work. Which is good, because I'm busy as hell right now, particularly yesterday, when I still had to create and finalize our Christmas cards after getting home (and attain my wife's approval of the photo choices and design) before going to play tennis. If the former wasn't completed before the latter, we might miss another precious day to still receive the cards in time to have our recipients get them before Christmas.

You never read the first review, but if you want to read this version, it's here. 

It was useful to have to do this, as it lowers my fear of the prospect of having to rewrite something in the future. 

What's more, it shows me something I didn't know before this as it relates to my 20-year-old self:

I've still got it.