Become a Reviser.
Honor your voice.
"Ninety percent of good writing is rewriting," observes professor, novelist, and nonfiction author Charles Johnson in a Paris Review interview. Harvard composition expert Nancy Sommers agrees, and her research reveals that writing is a way of "discovery" by "a repeated process of beginning over again" ("Revision Strategies," 387). Savvy writers define this revising as totally "re-seeing" their draft. Over months they "re-look" regularly, writing new drafts, investing hours in making significant changes. The more you write, the more you see how second and third chances are gifts, as are one-thousandth ones.
Experienced writers define revision (Sommers 383-384):
- "My first draft is usually very scattered. In rewriting, I find the line of argument."
- "Rewriting means . . . finding the argument."
- "[Revising] means taking apart what I have written and putting it back together again. I ask major theoretical questions of my ideas. . . . I find out which ideas can be developed and which should be dropped."
- "My cardinal rule in revising is never to fall in love with what I have written in a first or second draft."
"Just write—and revise, write and revise, write and revise."
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Don't write only one draft.
Don't practice the "thesaurus philosophy of writing" (Sommers 381). Don't focus just on vocabulary changes. |
Don't merely change words around.
Don't misdefine revision as: "[I] cross out a word and put another word in" (Sommers 380). Don't consider revising "a rewording activity" (Sommers 381). |