David Sedaris edits his work forty times

on respecting the process

David Sedaris, the patron saint of all things satire, showed up on stage wearing a cape. It might have been a fancy peacoat. Who knows? The point is he showed up on stage as the quintessential artíst we all wish we could be: Quirky. Eccentric. Kinda weird. And unabashedly talented.

The audience, likewise, was furnished in sequins, bright colors, and every manner of sartorial self-expression. They were a living breathing homage to Sedaris’ work. Showing up adorned with a hint of elitism and snark. It was perfect.

Between each piece Sedaris read aloud to the audience of maybe 300, he’d pause and chat a bit about the work; a funny background story, a joke that bombed, a direction a story was supposed to take but didn’t. He shared the process and made small talk.

What stood out to me was something he said as a throwaway comment. Like it was absolutely no big deal. Just a matter of fact. So insignificant no one even mentioned it later, no discussion. Few even remembered he’d said it.

I stopped dead. I’m not even sure I heard the rest of the performance.

Sedaris said that he uses these book tours to test out new material. And that by the time one of his stories is published it’s been tested, worked, and reworked, no less than forty to sixty times.

FORTY TO SIXTY TIMES!!!!!! 

I’m lucky if my posts get a second read before I hit publish. 

Can you imagine??

I read Sylvia Plath when I was 14 and couldn’t understand why my first drafts didn’t read like this. And I’ve thought that same thing every moment since no matter how much I know about the practice, the process, and (of course) editing.

I still believe what I think we all still believe: that true genius creates perfect first drafts and demands zero to no effort. It just flows out of you. And if it doesn’t, well, you’re a moron. Quit, go home, call it a day, and go back to accounting. 

Forty to sixty edits. Forty to sixty edits. 

There is nothing Sedaris publishes that isn’t completely and totally (already) vetted by his audience. It’s like standup. He’s testing the material. 

What Sedaris was doing that struck me most wasn’t that he was “working on his craft,” but that he was doing it in public. He wasn’t at home editing and re-editing and editing and re-editing. He was testing the material with his audience. Shipping it. Showing it. Sharing it.

And when it bombed, it bombed. Sedaris draws a skull in the margins of pieces that flop. He shrugs and says, “ok, let’s try that one a new way.”

Even though Sedaris is sharing deeply personal work, his delivery is relaxed. This is what it looks like when you know you’re not going to get it perfectly perfect straight out of the gate. You’re going to miss. You’re going to write jokes that aren’t funny and run-on sentences and pages of backstory that no one cares about and aren’t relevant to the main point. 

When I set aside my envy of his process, I found myself in awe. Of this lesson glaring at me. You don’t have to be David Sedaris or a “professional creative” to have respect for the process. You simply need to respect the process.

Not all of us have the privilege of an international tour to rigorously test our material, but we do have some analogous options (one of which is, ahem, Brainstorm Road). We do have the ability to respect the process. 

If all you do is write one line of poetry a day or 10 minutes of video editing or thirty strokes of paint - you respect the process when you don’t expect it to be perfect right out of the gate. You respect yourself and the work when you remember that it takes repeated effort and re-takes. When you allow a work in progress to simply be what it is: something that can be improved when we’ve got the guts to get on stage (or online) and share it. 

(note: this has been edited 0 times. Actually, one time. Because I showed the SFD* to Kristin who made it better.)

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*SFD is a 💩first draft #iykyk