The Revision Process

Revision is something I struggle with but am slowly becoming better at. Revision was always a hassle for me as I am a person who loves the idea of the spontaneous prose, often when I write my brain turns off and I simply write which allows the subconscious to emerge and often times the writing is very creative and forms a unique insight that not many people would expect. After I'm done writing I don't want to go back and clean it up because that would mean that I have to alter what is essentially the transcription of my thoughts, however not all writing is suited for that kind of approach. Often work done in that method shouldn't even be done outside of person journaling as the grammar, spelling, and sentence structure typically lacks (fragment city).

When revising now, I try to revise by going through and reading the paper 3 times before I even have someone else look at my paper. I'll go through the first time looking for spelling and grammar first usually, making sure my paper sounds like it wasn't written by a first grader. The next time I'll go through and make sure that this is what I really want my paper to say. Am I presenting the right ideas to my readers? Is the message on the paper the same one I have in my head? Finally I'll go through the third time which is the time I check for everything I did in the last two read through, however I read the paper thoroughly to make sure that all the error I can notice are gone. Once my 3 reads are done I'll call that a first draft then take the draft to someone else to read to see if they can help me improve the paper further.

One revision method I tried experimenting with was writing my first rough draft in pen. I figured that having to write via pen and paper would cause me to slow down my writing and think a bit more about my word choice. What I soon found however was that my writing slowed down too much. Each sentence was like an island unto itself and the paper didn't flow well. My explanations also tended to be sort as the hand written copy would take so long I assumed my explanation last alot longer than it really did reading it. Finally I found that it is harder to rearrange what you want to say as your writing the paper. One of the big advantages I found when writing and revising on the computer is that I can clearly see all the words written out before me and I can change and rearrange them on the fly so I can get my message right the first time, or at least a clearer way. In the future I want to experiment with writing a rough draft with pen and paper. There is something about the old ways of writing seems appealing to me. (my collection of fountain pens would indicate this interest).

Overall the revision process is something that requires times and diligence. Even though it may be the least exciting part of writing, it is the part that separates okay writing to great writing. It is during the revision process where the real message of the writing comes on the page and where you find the gem within the page.