(The link below will take you to the Brevity  nonfiction blog for an essay I just published yesterday. Or you can read below.)

https://brevity.wordpress.com/2017/03/27/re-thinking-an-essay-after-its-too-late/

I recently published an essay, “A Stranger At the Door,” on the Op/Ed page of the Chicago Tribune. And after reading it in its printed form, already irrevocably out there in the world – literally in black and white – I wanted to revise it. I really, really wanted to revise it. In fact, I wanted to rewrite the whole damn thing. But it was too late. The Chicago Tribune editorial policy (as I’m sure is the editorial policy of any traditional publication) is that authors are not allowed to change or comment on their own work once it is published.

As my editor replied to me in an email, “We don’t run letters by authors critiquing their own work.” Of course they don’t! Just think of all the confusion that might take place if this were allowed to happen.

“Oh, wait a minute, I just thought of something else I wanted to add in the third paragraph…” Or, “I really don’t think I hit the right tone, and I’d like to hand in this revised version.” The nature of an editor’s job, after all, is to move forward with the current, not drown in the undertow.
When you think about it, if we were allowed to revise our work after it was already published, then it might be in a constant state of revision. Might never really be done. Which sounds like another circle of hell.

Nevertheless. I still had this urge. In thirty years of writing commentary pieces and “slice-of-life” essays, and newspaper columns I have never had this response to one of my own pieces of writing. I always say what I have to say and move on.

Oddly, with this essay, as soon as I hit the “Send” tab I felt I might have done better. Might have gone deeper. The gist of my essay was that I had opened my front door to a stranger one night when I was alone, and how that small experience of doing so had made me question my mixed feelings about that small act. About whether I had been stupid to open my door, and whether I thought I might ever do so again. (Comments by readers let me know in no uncertain terms that opening a door to a stranger was about the dumbest thing in the world one could do.)

And it wasn’t that I wanted to write a response to these readers who were commenting on my essay. I actually wanted to rewrite my essay, because suddenly it seemed to me that I had taken a topic that was quite weighty and serious, and made it sound “lite” and quite smugly Pollyana-ish. What a great person I am to let a stranger into my home – twice no less!

What had made me uncomfortable was that, after reading my own words in print, I saw how easy it had been to blithely expound on how great I was to open my door to a stranger, from the comfort of my quiet, safe suburban home. Where the crime rate is low, and where our residents, as altruistic as most are – are able to do so in relative safety.

In this time of building walls, and not letting strangers in our metaphorical doors, I felt I did this topic a serious disservice. What was a feel-good moment for me personally did not warrant my own essayistic pat on the back. So, when I say I wanted a do-over, I guess I wanted to chance to frame the story in a new way.

Of course, 99.99% of the reading public is never going to read my essay. So I’m not even sure why it matters to me that I should have done better. Maybe one reason is that, even now, after decades of writing and publishing essays, I realized that I am still learning my craft. And that, always, words do matter.