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In "Writing in the Afterlife" by Billy Collins, what insights does he offer about writing and revision?

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In "Writing in the Afterlife," Billy Collins humorously likens writing and revision to eternal suffering, drawing parallels between writing and the mythological afterlife. He portrays revision as a torturous, never-ending process, akin to being in hell, where new assignments constantly emerge. The poem highlights the demanding and isolating nature of writing, emphasizing the struggle against unclear thoughts and external pressures, with the sarcastic tone suggesting that writing is more a chore than a choice.

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In this darkly humorous, tongue-in-cheek poem, Collins's speaker compares revising writing to going to hell. He describes it as a horrible experience. He had envisioned, for instance, that the atmosphere when he revised would be clear, but it is a "sulphurous haze." Further, he is revising in a place crowded with people all naked and bent over their own revisions. Worse, as he revises, new assignments immediately come his way—and not just one! He has to describe hell in detail, and then, as another assignment, write about what it feels like to be in hell. Writing is "a never-ending, infernal process" in a jammed-up, crowded landscape.

This is an accurate description of many people's experience of writing and revision. Neither writing nor revision happens in a vacuum. A new assignment—or two or three—with all the pressure that entails, always hovers on the horizon, even as we are revising what we...

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have just finished. The revision process often isn't clear—we can fight through what seems a haze as we struggle to reorganize, clarify our thoughts, and say what we mean to say. Meanwhile, life is going on around us, including all the other people writing madly and revising, so that it can seem lonesome even in a crowd of other writers.

The poem reminds us that writing—and especially revising—is demanding, rather than easy.

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In “Writing in the Afterlife,” Billy Collins compares eternal suffering in the afterlife to the process of writing. The afterlife in Collins's poem is the afterlife of Greek mythology—complete with river and ferryman. The poem sets the idea of the afterlife as being an unpleasant place that is filled with people on boats, never reaching the other side, furiously writing under the guidance of a Chiron that is always chiding them to do more.

Collins makes writing and revision seem unpleasant. He adds in the pedantic voice of the writing teacher to chide the tormented souls on the boats,

Our next assignment would be
to jot down, off the tops of our heads,
our thoughts and feelings about being dead,
not really an assignment,
the man rotating the oar keeps telling us—
think of it more as an exercise . . .

The teacher is continuously scolding them to do more things. The tone of the piece is depressing, brought on by the almost sarcastic comments of the boatman. The idea that it's not an “assignment” but an “exercise” implies that it's for the good of those trapped souls, but it is clear from the language that it isn’t done by choice. It's a chore and a struggle rather than something people would prefer to do.

The idea is that the writing process is like a prison—something people must continually do against their wills. The boatman has a candid moment in the poem where he says,

Think of writing as a process,
a never-ending, infernal process . . .

Writing is like eternal, infernal torture.

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