The Hard Work of Revision

Post date: Sep 28, 2016 2:08:36 PM

The Hard Work of Revision – blog post for September 28

Recently, I’ve wrapped up work on two longer pieces (one 18 pages and the other 12 pages), going through several drafts for one and at least half a dozen for the longer piece. For the past three decades, I taught the writing process to my students, and I practice it in my own writing.

What’s the writing process? It is a series of tasks that most writers do: plan, write and revise. The first task, planning, involves brainstorming to generate and organize information, which often results in a visual map or outline. Planning also includes doing research and looking at any guidelines or requirements for the document. For longer projects, I like to create what I call a “padded outline,” adding information from my sources. Then I use the outline to compose my first draft and then revise, polishing the prose, doing a final edit for correctness, and checking sources and format as needed.

I found that revision was the hardest part for my students, and I understand, because it is hard work. However, I cannot think of a single essay, story, column, or article that I was able to write in one draft.

So, what are some strategies for revision? Here are six things I’ve learned that work!

1. After you’ve written the “ruff draft,” print it out, wait a few hours, and then read it with a pen or pencil in hand to make notes. Look back at your requirements: word count, documentation style, topic or theme, sources, etc. Can you find your thesis or main idea? Have you done what you set out to do: explain, describe, define, compare, or just tell a great story?

2. Read your essay out loud, or have your reviewer read it out loud to find awkward phrasing, awkward transitions, missing words, and other problems. Then you can scribble down a note, cross something out, insert something, or add a question mark or punctuation.

3. If you need to cite sources, the built-in tools in Word are not very accurate for MLA, but I found it to work well for Chicago style. When I rearranged my paragraphs, the end notes moved automatically!

4. Try using copy and paste to move material around to get a better flow of ideas. After a previous revision left one section reduced to one paragraph, my third reviewer found a better home for it and we deleted the header. I was fascinated by how much better it worked in the new location and remembered watching my mother working at our dining room table as she put together the Sunday school Christmas program. She typed up a lot of little speaking pieces and then cut them up into strips, and rearranged them until she liked the order, and used Elmer’s glue to place them on a new sheet of typing paper! It’s easier now to do copy and paste.

5. Get several people to read and respond to your work: they will almost always look at different aspects of the work. I was blessed with three reviewers for my Suckow chapter. The first of my reviewers has a great deal of subject matter expertise as well as experience writing and editing, while the second reviewer has some knowledge of the subject as well as a great eye/ear for editing, and the third reviewer had little knowledge of the subject but a gift for analyzing the flow of ideas and finding ways to improve it. Each one gave me valuable suggestions.

6. In addition, pay attention to file naming: if you are sending things by email as attachments, you might save the draft with the person’s name in the file name beforehand, to make it easy for them. So, in the following file name, my husband Mike is going to give me feedback. (Cheries Essay on Revision w Mike). An alternative, however, for many people is to use Google Docs/Drive and share documents with people. It is easy to use the “insert comments” feature and then send back the essay by sharing it. I used this with my Education students for the past seven years and found it effective.

What strategies do you find most helpful for revising? Let me know, and I will collect the comments for another blog post.

Last Updated 9/28/2016