Recently I took a trip to China. Packing was, as usual, a chore. Beforehand I’d done a little shopping and picked up some lightweight pieces that would pack easily. But, there was no place to hang them in my closet. This realization prompted my latest wardrobe downsizing event.

About twice a year I walk into my closet (or, to be honest, plow my way in) and go on a ruthless mission of purging it of any and all pieces of clothing that either:

a.) I can’t remember the last time I wore

b.) don’t match anything else, or

c.) (UGH!) no longer fits.

I mercilessly stick to my criteria and refuse to give anything in my “give-away” pile a second glance. Cut the wardrobe back to the point where every item serves a fashion or functional purpose.

I sighed as I added a great blue-green sweater with then tags still on it to the pile. I’d fallen in love with it, even though the cut wasn’t quite right, even though the color was hard to match. I almost kept it, and the anxious attachment and cloying resistance I felt as I held it above the give-away pile was strangely familiar. I paused and thought about this deja-vu feeling. I’d felt it recently, in some other context – but when?

Then I smiled. It was at a writers’ workshop I attended for a week last summer led by authors Donna Jo Napoli and Carolyn Coman. And it wasn’t wardrobes we were discussing. It was revision.

In this “whole novel” workshop participants submitted their entire manuscripts, and in intensive sessions throughout the week worked these drafts toward being publishable. The week was all about revision. And what we all learned was that a HUGE part of revision was purging. Slicing and dicing even beautiful words and exquisite phrases to reveal only the sharpest, most powerful prose.

I continue to be struck by the irony of this – as teachers we spend so much energy trying to encourage kids to write lots of vivid vocabulary and powerful description. The art of revision in the elementary school seems to be a lot more about adding on rather than honing down. So, is this the wrong approach? Is less always better?

A seasoned author is a wordsmith. Language floats her/his boat. Words fascinate. A writer becomes a word connoisseur, tinkering with the nuances between this phrase and that, this word or the other.

But, becoming a wordsmith involves knowing and practicing with words, words, words, in reading, speaking, listening, and writing. The wordsmith’s initial draft can afford to be lush. This richness provides the raw material for revision. In other words, it’s good to start with a lot. Then you can compare, experiment, try words on for size, keep only those that are the best fits, and discard the rest. Just like my wardrobe.

So, yes – encourage your students to write a LOT of description. To play with an abundance of words. Fall in love with language. Then, after spending the first few years of their writing lives crafting lots of words, they’ll be better prepared to spend the entire rest of their writing lives involved in the art of revision.

So, how do your future wordsmiths participate in revision? In your class is it more about “shopping” for marvelous description, or about scaling back? How do you make every word count?