Revision is one of the hardest, and often most misunderstood parts of the writing process. It’s not fixing the spelling mistakes. It’s re-seeing the writing, trying to understand what works in it and what you’d like to change, and then making those changes.
How and when do you revise your writing? Do you do it as you draft, after you draft, or some combination of the two? What thinking happens to help you decide where to put certain ideas or details? What help do you solicit to help you figure out what could use revision? What do you prioritize when you revise, and why? Post your insights in the “comment” section below.
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI often revise during the initial writing of the piece. Sometimes, I’ll realize that a certain word or phrase that I’ve just written is not exactly right immediately after I’ve written it. Or I’ll just think of something better right away.
I also go back and read what I’ve already written before I finish the piece. This allows me to refocus and to check for “flow.” Does it sound good? Are there any parts that sound awkward? Is there a better way to say something? The main reason I use this practice is because of the first one I mentioned. I need to recheck where I’m going with my writing,to make sure I’m sticking to my theme or purpose.
After I have written the first draft I have to give myself at least a week before I can revise. I need time because when I’m done with the first draft two things happen. I either think that I have written is pretty bad or I think it’s wonderful. This happens because I’m too close to the piece right after I’ve finished it and I can’t look at it with a clean heart and mind. Giving a piece time is a very important part of my revision process.
I prefer to revise some time after I’ve made my draft. Enough time afterward, actually, that I’ve had time to process the work on a less directed level and also time to step away from it and change focus – a break.
I love working with word processing because I can then play with the structure, rearrange it many times, and see which parts need polish and which simply don’t work. Depending on the type of writing I’m doing, I may take a look through some other texts I like – from favorite stories and poems to instruction on the writing process, and then consider ways to add those nuances that make it stand out.
This is also the time when I decide whether I’ve started out on the right foot, closed in an interesting way, and expanded any moments to give insight or direction to the piece. I also look for fluency and flow: how does it sound? Is any term or phrase overused? Which parts should be emphasized?
Often, this process makes me take the order apart entirely – usually it’s a good thing. I love it when I can pass it along several friends or colleagues and get feedback, for often they spark new ideas that help me shape the final piece, like pottery on a wheel. I work it over until either the deadline approaches or I’m really satisfied with it…
I used to think editing and revision were synonymous. Ah, those were blissful days when I thought that if all my words were spelled correctly then my piece was finished. Now I have this new definition of revision which requires fine tooth combing content, structure, and all the stuff that really matters. I revise as I go, after the fact, and then some more after that. I don’t really know how to explain how I revise except that sometimes the words don’t feel right in my mouth. So I re-work them until they feel right. It’s certainly not a science. This is the first time I’ve submitted anything to other people for revision and the feedback I got was really valuable. So, I think I’ll keep doing that.
Revise took on a new meaning for me yesterday. First of all, Peter wore the shirt with the word REVISE on it and the word was burned into my memory forever.
I worked in the computer lab, making posts to my portfolio after class. The word REVISE haunted me. I reread each posting. My eyes blurred as I stared at the computer screen. I reread and then I printed out hard copies to take with me. When my tolerance for editing reached an ending point, I pulled out my Cruzer and walked back to the dorm.
I may have put the hard copies away but Janeen was working on her laptop and I felt compelled to sit down and reread what I had just posted on my blog. To my horror, there were sentences that were not clear to my purpose, there were errors in spelling and syntax, I wasn’t done.
I took out my yellow highlighter tool and began to mark the golden lines of correction. I took out my pen and wrote in new words, putting a carrot where I thought additions were necessaary. I reread the hard copies.
It was dinner time so Janeen, Eileen and I opted to go to Tres and have some dinner. It was not only a refueling stop, it was a time to converse on topics other than portfolios or writng. We were seated at the window and noticed an unavoidable presence of fire trucks and firefighters. A reminder that during the summer institue we had been under seige by wildland fires, threatening nearby homes and communites. So, while we were in the confines of Taylor Hall, people were being evacuated from their homes, grasping belongings that may or may not have monetary value, but were deemed “essential”. A contrast, a comparison, a writing prompt! The waitress asked if we wanted anything else and we declined, only requesting the checks. We paid and walked outside.
We agreed that Jon Bon’s would be our next stop. We walked the two blocks south, all the while observing firefighters talking on cell phones, probably checking in with friends and families. Their lives had been reassigned as well. Oh dear! Another writing prompt!
At Jon Bons we each chose a differnt delight and we laughed at the simple and make stilly comments about our current “reassignment”. It was the needed seigway to distract us from the fact that our portfolios were due the next day.
Returning to the dorm, Eileen rushed off to make it to Cost Plus for their last thirty minutes of retail opportunity, and Janeen sat down at her laptop. I returned to my hard copies for more revision. Janeen began to elicit sounds of disbelief as she realized that her writing had floated into cyberspace and was, for the moment, “lost”.
We decided to go out and walk the track. The walk was another needed distraction and an opportunity to acquire new oxygen that hopefully would replenish tired brain cells.
Upon our return we retired to our respective “caves”.
The morning light brought new hope for new beginnings. Janeen was still trying to plan her next step. I left for the computer lab and sat down to add the revisions to my portfolio documents. I did so.
I know I am not done, I am just reaching the end of this timeline. A writer never stops thinking about writing. A teacher never stops thinking about teaching. A revisor (is this a word?) never stops thinking about revising. Thanks for wearing that shirt Peter!
I’m a continual reviser. I revise from the moment I start to draft, which is sometimes a bit of a problem. I can get so stuck on making a particular sentence perfect (I’m doing it now–I wonder if I should put the word “absolutely” in front of perfect, I guess because perfect alone doesn’t perfectly capture how perfect I want things to be when I write!) that I can’t keep going with my thoughts.
The result of this is that I’m slow when I write. If I take a break during writing that’s longer than, say, ten or fifteen minutes, I usually go all the way back (to the beginning of the piece, sometimes, or to the beginning of the section I’m working on, usually) and reread it. As I reread, I notice that some sentences are as clear as I’d like, or that some idea would better belong in a different place, and so I fix those as I go. This means that, usually, my first complete draft of anything is already in pretty decent shape, and has been read and revised several times.
But after this, I usually solicit feedback from someone. Often, because I’m lucky enough (?!) to write mostly for publication (publish or perish, you know), I get feedback from an editor (of a book or journal), and their feedback is designed to help me make the piece better fit the audience for their book or journal. That’s usually incredibly helpful, and it’s often very specific feedback, too, so I don’t often need a ton of help interpreting what they’re asking me to do. But this is still a bit laborious, and I often feel reluctant to carry out this last step. I have this “I think it’s fine the way it is” attitude that I have to help myself get over each time; I remind myself that if it was my opinion that counted, I would be the editor, not the writer. So I suck it up and do the revision, and send it back. As many times as is needed.
Revising is indeed the process of re-seeing.
The first paper I wrote this summer was inspired, thoughtful, a work of art in the first go. I was further buoyed by the fact that my writing group agreed–or in any case had no substantive criticisms. I lost interest in revising it. And I think sometimes this is what we must do: lose interest in the piece completely, even misplace it. When I re-read the paper just a week and a half later, the organizational kurfuffles jumped right out at me. I saw the places where the voice needed patched. And (low-and-behold) my consummate prose was in fact, quite long-winded. Delete. Delete. It was much easier to see and make these changes then.
One day last October-ish I wrote this piece of throw-away fiction which was an extended metaphor for the making of spanikopita (a Greek phyllo dough dish). The piece was an exasperated response to a friend’s cycle of always chasing after romantic partners who are not interested. I had TOTALLY forgotten I had drafted and saved it until I was looking in my computer for something else and thought, “Hmm. Why is a recipe titled “Spanikopita” in my stories file? I read. I liked. I thought others would be amused–if it just had some umph. And if the overt lines were re-written to be understated and so on. I have a couple of friends who like to READ good writing. (I have discovered lately that the best revision suggestions come from readers, not really from writers!) They had solid suggestions. I even co-re-wrote a whole section. One of the readers suggested we make this complicated recipe the following weekend to see if the extended metaphor works in reality. (See! Even baking can be a part of revision.) Some things rang true, while others did not. I incorporated this into my final draft.
I used to write, cross out and rewrite until I was done. That was it. Going back to a piece of writing and truly revising is relatively new to me. Some experiences that I have had in the past several years including my involvement with NCWP, my attempts to publish some things, and writing to complete my Master’s program helped me to wrap my mind around revision in a big way. Revision is a temperamental task. I really have to be in the right frame of mind to revise well, otherwise I will think everything on the page before me is hideous and must be destroyed and that whoever wrote it must be an imbecile. We don’t want that. When it is the right time to revise, I need to see a hard copy first. I read, underline, make notes in the margin, draw a star where a new chunk needs to go and noting what the chunk should contain. Beginning revision is a solitary task, but after some time working on a piece I do seek input from others. I am always amazed at what a fresh pair of eyes can do to help me enhance my writing.
My process of revision is as loud and messy as a woodshop: loud because I’m often reading my words outloud to my eyes and my ears, concentrating on the necessary distance ‘outside’ of myself to hear them as closely to the first time as I can; my revisions are often very messy and inscrutable to anyone other than myself.
Years ago, meandering through the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, I surrendipitously happened upon an installation on view from the Pierpont Morgan library: tastefully displayed behind plexiglass were the actual manuscripts of some of the most important British and American writers of the last one hundred years. You know the names, and there were revisions of their novels, right there, THERE! in their own handwriting. I would do anything now to see those manuscripts again, to deepen my inquiry whether a handwritten novel, like any neolithic post and lintel structure, is more demanding of concentration, will and available resources, than the word processing to which I’m completely addicted in my revising process.
I’m fond, for example, of emphasizing and deemphasizing ideas as they arise in my re-seeing my text, inserting them right inside a sentence, making run-on, fragmented havoc, were it not for my gray font palette. Ideas remain without slowing me down while I move on, looking closely at my phrases, all with a quick highlighting swoosh and snap–a faint whisp of a thought which may or may not endure the salmon run of considerations.
Word processing also allows me to take on another layer of revising neurosis further. When I need to see my sentence structures via satellite, I’ll literally copy the entire document to a new sheet and insert a return after every period, turning the entire text into a list of sentences all starting from the left. There, clear and pristine, the few strengths and many weaknesses of all of the beginnings, endings, the lengths and transitions of all of my sentences. I sigh and get to sanding down, dismantling, adding joints, and plugging in putty where there are holes, and, to the degree that I was honest with myself, I’ll have something strong enough to sit in. The writing might even be comfortable.
I normally revise during the writing of the piece. I keep in mind the last sentence or two while I am composing the sentence on hand. Generally, I have a initial plan for the piece but I find that the plan evolves as the sentences come together. What is fun about writing is that the message somewhat shapes itself as it grows. I will frequently revise a sentence or two back as I go along to help support my progress.
What I find tedious is going back over the piece once I have completed it. I like to believe that when I am finished composing, the work is perfect. It is somewhat disheartening to go back over catching and mending mistakes.
I normally fix spelling as the spell checker “shouts them out”. That takes away some of the post production tedium.
I revise as I write. I will write as much as I can before coming to a stopping point and then I read what I have written aloud to myself. I always find places where the words don’t flow or I didn’t get my ideas expressed correctly. I work with the text until I have something that represents my ideas and reads smoothly. When I finish a piece of writing I read it one more time before asking for somebody with a fresh eye to look it over. I listen to their suggestions and make the changes that they suggest. The thing that I really look for when I revise is that the paper reads easily, there are vivid examples and the paper reflects my thoughts. The process of revision is very labor intensive because each time you read it there are changes to make.