Revision Rewriting

The writing process is never done—it is only finished when you need to hand something in or voluntarily discontinue working. If you picked up a piece of writing you completed two years ago, you undoubtedly would see ways you could improve it. Two years later, you could do the same thing. Perspectives on life and the world are always changing (even if we don’t notice it), we will always look at our writing differently.

Revision is the process of looking back on your writing (or someone else’s writing) and changing it to make it better. Many books advise on revising that isn’t that helpful. They say things such as “remove unnecessary words.” But how exactly do you know those words are unnecessary? How do you write with clarity, conciseness, and organization, and still make sure that your point has come across?

The first thing you need to do is to make sure that you distance yourself from your work. This will allow you to look at it with fresh eyes. There is one easy way to distance yourself from your work; leave it alone, at least overnight. Then, when you pick it up again, you can revise it. Revision is a very difficult concept to teach to people. Writers especially are very attached to their own words. They wrote them, and they are reluctant to change them. But remember that you can write the best sentence in the whole world, and it can be a sentence that does not belong to what you are writing.

There are really only 4 things you can do to change what you have physically written down. These are:

1. Add information, quotes, words, or punctuation you think will help make your piece clearer or more descriptive for your reader.
2. Subtract information, quotes, or words you think don’t add anything to your writing or might confuse your reader.
3. Move information, quotes, words, or even entire paragraphs or passages you think would make more sense somewhere else.
4. Change or Substitute words for other words, quotes for other quotes, or less pertinent information for more pertinent information to make your reading clearer, more unified, or more descriptive.

A great book to help you out with some revising and self-editing, available July 5th, Editing 101. If you haven’t already subscribed, please do so you can be the first to know when the book is live.