Description

Find creative inspiration in this fascinating rummage through the wastebaskets, secret diaries, and abandoned files of 20 literary superstars.

If you like to write—whether it’s a pastime, a passion, or a profession—you’ve probably found yourself reading something brilliant and thinking, “I could never do this! I might as well give up.” But if there’s one thing every great author has in common, it’s this: they’ve all written some hot garbage. 

Revisionaries takes you on an engrossing tour through the discarded drafts, false starts, and abandoned projects of influential writers. In the process, it dismantles some of our most deeply held—and most suffocating—ideas about what it takes to produce great creative work. You’ll learn that:

• Franz Kafka lacked confidence
• Octavia Butler had writer's block blocked
• F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote bad drafts
• Ralph Ellison got overwhelmed
• Louisa May Alcott got off to a bad start
• And more deep, dark secrets about the authors you most admire

About the Author

Kristopher Jansma is the author of Why We Came to the City and The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards, winner of the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award. A graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program, he is now an assistant professor of English and creative writing at SUNY New Paltz and a graduate lecturer in fiction at Sarah Lawrence College. He has written for the New York Times, Salon, The Believer, The Millions, Slice, BOMB, and Electric Literature. He lives with his wife and son in Brooklyn, New York.