I thought I would start by giving you a brief introduction to revision, a brief dip into the book. And then we'll get little windows into a variety of revision processes. So revision is basically seeing again, revising. It's the core of the words, seeing again, seeing a new. And over the last, well, at least 10 years, I've been asking, well, what does that mean? What does it mean to see a new in the writing process? There's really two pieces of wisdom that I lean on most heavily. One is a short passage from Robert Frost, one of the introductions to his books of poetry, where he says, no tears in the reader. I'm sorry, no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. But those of you who are writers have heard this phrase a lot. No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. I think it's really a profound bit of wisdom and it's worth contemplating a little bit more deeply. Because I think what Robert Frost is saying there is that the foundation of good writing is not talent. It's not skill. It's definitely not literary gymnastics. It's the writer's willingness to be changed. Everything else is icing. And it's all good, it's all worthy. But at the core, writing is, the foundation of good writing is that open heart, that willingness to be revised. So what is it that writers need to move a reader? We need an open willing heart. And I don't think as a writing community, we've fully lived into that idea. So I kind of want to explore some of the ramifications of that with you. If that's true, if what we need to move a reader is an open willing heart in the writing process, then the capacity to move a reader is available to everyone. Every single one of you, whether you think of yourself as a writer or not. And so it's not about age or talent or experience. It's just like something that if you're willing to learn and grow in the writing process, then you can move a reader. And I think we know this. How many of you have been to a funeral of a friend and some bumbling teenage grandson gets up to you, apologize his grandmother? And gets everyone crying because what he has to say is so courageous and courageous not just in the writing but in the standing up to do it. It's honest, it's vulnerable, it's full of love. So that bumbling teenager is able to move his audience by that openness. And so that's available to all of us. It's not something that's just for the writing elite. So you hear lots of writers talk about writing is revision and everyone moans when they say that. But I think it's really true that writing is revision. It's not just revision of the text, it's revision of the self. And actually it needs to first be revision of the self. It needs to be recene how the self sees. So if that's true, then a lot of what gets taught in writing classes is important, but it's a little bit off the mark. It doesn't build that foundation, that openness to change, that open heart. So it seems to me that a real central task of writing is this opening of our hearts to tears and surprise, a spiritual practice. That's what a spiritual practice is. And again, I think we know this intuitively that what we most love about writing are those tears and surprises. We love that sense of discovery. We love that feeling of coming alive on the page. But we tend to imagine that that only happens in the journal or the first draft. That's where we segregate the spiritual life. And there's tons of books out there on journaling as a spiritual practice and to some extent on drafting as a spiritual practice. We tend to think of the rest of the writing process, the developing of work as grunt work. So that's when we start cleaning things up for an audience. We start making them presentable. Or if you're more noble, you think that's when you start making art. You start making things beautiful. But I want to make an argument for the fact that the whole writing process is an opportunity for tears and surprise.