Don Paterson doubts that Shakespeare "ever revised a poem without improving it significantly", and he might have had more confidence about his own talents in that line.
Stein never, or hardly ever, revised (a rare false start to "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" exists among Stein's papers), and in "Everybody's Autobiography"she said that she never wrote much more than half an hour a day (but added significantly, "To be sure all day and every day you are waiting around to write that half hour a day").
A few decades ago, the advent of the word processor made it easier than ever to revise on the fly; it also made it easy to dwell on one sentence ad infinitum, gilding the lily where once one would've advanced to the next thought.
The sequence and others in which Harper, also hallucinating, is featured are where the ever-revising Kushner has yet to find the right balance.
Being ever ready to revise, learning even hard lessons, should always be the order of the day.
"In November, before Flynn was ever charged, he revised that order to try to reflect this sort of nuance in the Supreme Court holdings," Simpson explained.
The idea of adding something new to your repertory of belongings - be it as tiny as a modish bottle opener or as large as a cashmere winter coat - seems to suggest by some process of osmosis a change bigger than itself: Life might open up with you in possession of this new item, or you yourself might be ever so slightly revised and adopt a whole new worldview.
Set primarily in 1744 and 1745, Amazing Grace depicts Newton's story, its timeline revised ever so slightly for the sake of tidiness.
Science is always seeking to collect more data, explore new territory and scenarios, and to revise itself if ever a conflict arises.
The question is whether voters — who alone have the power to revise the state Constitution — would ever be willing to rethink the status quo.
