Write On: The Bullseye

As you can probably tell by now, I’m a writer who enjoys writing.

So in a series of blog posts that I’m cataloguing under the heading “Write On"!” (see what I did there?) I’ll be talking about books about writing that I’ve read, writing struggles that I face, and/or writing strategies that I’ve found helpful.

One of my all-time favorite books on writing is William Germano’s On Revision: The Only Writing That Counts (2021).

I can’t speak for others, but my writing often stalls, not in the drafting phase—I rarely stare blankly at a blank screen or page—but in the revision process.

That’s when I tend to start going in circles, making sentence level edits that (usually) make things sound better, but that (ironically) don’t move me forward in the direction of a more polished draft.

As we all know from watching The Shining, the sentence “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” sounds good, and yet… that’s not the issue with the draft overall.

In my own revision process, I will eventually end up with a lot of great-sounding paragraphs that I can’t seem to connect to a larger argument, because I’m not entirely clear what that larger argument is, really.

Germano argues that good writing has a “pulse”: in my case, that pulse tends to be intermittently distributed across my paragraphs.

Sometimes it’s quite weak (or nonexistent), other times relatively strong.

But even paragraphs with a strong pulse can’t function in isolation.

This is where I find Germano’s concept of the “Writing Bullseye” helpful.

I’ve included a picture of one of my latest manifestations of it.

Using different colors in each of the different rings is optional, obviously, but I do it because it helps make the different “levels” of my formulation clearer.

The outer ring briefly describes the project; the middle ring identifies the specific “problem” that you’re writing about.

The inner ring identifies the question that you’re asking about this specific “problem.”

More details about this process—and about the process of finding your argument in general—can be found in Chapter 4 of On Revision.

What I like about Germano’s conception of the “Writing Bullseye” is that, by forcing me to drill down on the precise issue or “problem” that I want to tackle and what exactly it is that I want to ask about that issue or problem, it helps me to wade through the description.

I often find my argument in response to the claims of others; while this means I rarely stare at a blank page, it often means that my initial drafts are filled with what others have said.

So for me, revision usually involves cutting everyone else out and figuring out how to foreground more of my own argument.

I’ve had good editors and peer reviewers in the past who’ve helped me with this challenge, but Germano’s “Writing Bullseye” has definitely given me a better ability to help myself over this particular hurdle in the revision process.

I’ve swapped going in circles with creating targeted circles that help me to home in on my individual contribution to a particular writing “conversation.”

As Germano argues in On Revision, “an argument is an idea with the ambition to change things” (109).

So if, like me, you struggle to find the ambition driving your idea, I suggest giving Germano’s “Writing Bullseye” a try.