Re-Visioning
This week we begin the process of revision. For some of us, this is more
difficult than others. Writing is personal, and every time we share it we are
sharing a piece of ourselves. One of the hardest steps in the writing process
has already been overcome - the peer workshop. But now I believe the difficult
work begins for you - deciding where you want to take your pieces. You must
decide what advice you want to take and what you want to leave on the table, so
to speak.
One of my college professors quoted Falkner to me, and I will never forget
it. She told me:
"In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”
You must choose which darlings are cute enough to stay and which need to hit
the high road. For some assistance, I'd like you to read the following article
about revision.
http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/revising-drafts/
Once you've read the article, I'd like you to post your thoughts about it.
What did you find most helpful/least helpful, what tips will you take with you
to the computer lab this week as you begin to prepare your portfolio. Please
try not to make the same comments as someone before you, so make sure to read
through the previous comments before leaving your own.
"The more you produce, the more you can cut." This tip made me realize that I should write down all of my ideas not just a few.
ReplyDelete"The more you can imagine yourself as a reader looking at this for the first time, the easier it will be to spot potential problems." I liked this tip because I need to put myself in the readers shoes more.
The most helpful part was "Work from a printed copy; it’s easier on the eyes. Also, problems that seem invisible on the screen somehow tend to show up better on paper." I am going to try to plan out my revisions on paper first before typing them.
ReplyDelete"The more you can imagine yourself as a reader looking at this for the first time, the easier it will be to spot potential problems." I need to do this more and separate myself from my work and imagine that im the reader, not the writer. I think it will be helpful if I am able to do this more.
ReplyDelete"Work from a printed copy; it’s easier on the eyes. Also, problems that seem invisible on the screen somehow tend to show up better on paper." This tip is helpful to me because I always find it more difficult to read it on the computer. Reading and editing and working on a hard copy is more effective.
"read the paper out loud to see how well things flow."
ReplyDelete-This tip is becoming a lost art. Most of the time students avoid this step in the editing process. I believe when you read your work out loud you can really hear what flows and what doesn't opposed to just skimming through a paper.
"Wait awhile after you’ve finished a draft before looking at it again." This is something that I believe many people, including myself, do not do. If you read a draft and then try and read it again right away, chances are that you will not notice any different mistakes. It is good to step away from the paper, reset, and then read it again in attempt to find new mistakes or areas the paper could improve.
ReplyDelete"Look for places where you’ve used the same word or phrase twice or more in consecutive sentences and look for alternative ways to say the same thing OR for ways to combine the two sentences."
ReplyDeleteThis tip is very helpful for me because it is the most common mistake I make in every paper I write. I often just rewrite the same phrase/ sentence over and over. I also liked the tip to read my paper out loud because I feel that reading the paper out loud is the best way for me to catch those overused phrases or sentences that sound too similar.
"The more you produce, the more you can cut." I liked this because I think that people think its a bad thing to cut down your work, which its not. If you compile a bunch of your ideas, you can cut it down and pick your favorite or one that you think will produce the best writing. having multiple ideas is a good thing.
ReplyDelete"Don’t fall in love with what you have written." This tip is helpful because not being partial to your own writing makes it much easier to pinpoint different problems with it, and you can revise it much more effectively. It keeps you from being too nice to yourself, and you will find many more things that can be edited in your writing.
ReplyDelete"If you want to be a polished writer, then you will eventually find out that you can’t afford NOT to throw stuff away."
ReplyDeleteI thought this was very good advice because I often like what I have written so much that I don't want to touch it. I know that in order to truly improve my piece of writing I need to not get too attached to any on sentence because it may be irrelevant or off-topic.
It would've been nice to read this article before now.... the grades i could have saved last year....
ReplyDeleteI liked the advice about printing it out and reading it out loud, because although I hate reading things out loud I do think it's useful. I'm definitely going to try and print out my papers for self-revision from now on-we'll see if that habit lasts, but at least it'll help me in this class.
The biggest thing i learned was that editing and proofreading are two different things. Prior to reading this article I had assumed the two were the same when I was getting ready to turn a paper in. Now i realize that proofreading is correcting spelling and grammar while editing is more looking at the overall picture of your story and deciding whats necessary and whats not. This will be very beneficial going forward as it will help me correct my paper even more before turning it in.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest helpful tip I received was to think bigger and out of the box. This is what helps great writing, because without a specific reason to be writing and a direction for your story and words. The least helpful tip I got was to revise at the sentence level. Early in the article it tells you not to to get into the small details like word choice and the like until you have fleshed out the large flaws in your story. I agree with this and I don't think that it is nearly as important as a good story overall.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot of great information to be used in the future from this article. The best tip I received from it was to not fall in love with your writing or you will never change anything. Another point the article struck home was no revision is bad and that is a common misconception derived from laziness.
ReplyDeleteI thought the articles comments on printed papers being easier on the eyes was helpful. Additionally, reading out loud is another point that helps revision, since it allows you to hear your own writing. Lastly, you cannot be infatuated with what you've written or else revision will be very difficult
ReplyDeleteAn important tip that I took note of was about how to get really good at revising, "The same way you get really good at golf, piano, or a video game—do it often." I believe that practice makes perfect and once you try something multiple times, you will be able to get the hang of it. Just like in editing, you begin to notice things you wouldn't have your first time editing.
ReplyDelete"The more you demand of yourself in terms of clarity and elegance, the more clear and elegant your writing will be" This suggestion stood out to me because I think it is very inspirational. I feel as if it is easy to just write (ha) yourself off as a bad writer, but I think the truth is that if you have high standards, hold yourself to them, and believe that you can achieve them then anyone can be a "good writer". I hope that I can use this piece of advice to both improve my writing and my confidence.
ReplyDeleteThis article was filled with great information and was really great to read. Reading out loud is a technique that I have really found to be helpful over the years, it helps you pick up on things you wouldn't regularly hear. Its really important to think outside of the box when writing because it will help you develop bigger ideas.
ReplyDelete"The idea or metaphor or paragraph that I think is most wonderful and brilliant is often the very thing that confuses my reader or ruins the tone of my piece or interrupts the flow of my argument"
ReplyDeleteI thought this quote was helpful because sometimes while I am writing, I get caught up with one idea that I might have come up with and it does not fit with the rest of the paper, and it makes it go in the wrong direction. I need to remember that if it doesn't fit the argument perfect, then I have to get rid of it. I hope to use this piece of advise as I write more papers this year, and in the future.
This article was helpful to me throughout my personal revision process. I generally do minimal revisions on m pieces but this article helped explain what to do and how to get over that sort of second time around writers block. I resonated with a lot of the questions that were asked throughout the article and i found it answered my questions quite thoroughly.
ReplyDeleteThe best piece of advice I got from the article was to not fall in love with my writing. Too many times, I get stuck with what I wrote and I don't want to edit and revise my writing. I need to begin to allow myself to let others make edits with my paper and not to fall in love with my rough draft.
ReplyDeleteThe piece of advice that I found least effective was not putting a lot of detail into a rough draft.I have trouble really detailing what I want in a paper and putting extra detail in a rough draft is very helpful.
This article was full of helpful advice and a really solid read. I often find it difficult to find areas of improvement in my work and also my peers. This article gave the very helpful advice of not to fall in love with a piece of work specifically my own but I've applied this advice to others works as well.
ReplyDeleteThe most useful message in the article is to ignore grammar and proofreading as you create your first draft. I tend to spend too much time editing and revising as I go, which leads to a less concise story/paper when I finally finish. I also then don't want to go back and revise again after spending so much time on the first draft. Just putting down my thoughts and fixing the problems later would definitely help me.
ReplyDeleteOne of the points I enjoyed was recommending to read your piece out loud as it allows you to get a better understanding of your piece and how it sounds. One thing that I do enjoy ever that the article disagrees with is editing on a computer. While sometimes I like editing on paper, a computer is much easier to actually make edits on and track them.
ReplyDeleteThe tips that I found most helpful were "The more you can imagine yourself as a reader looking at this for the first time, the easier it will be to spot potential problems," "Don’t fall in love with what you have written," and "Pick a few 'agendas' for each draft so that you won’t go mad trying to see, all at once, if you’ve done everything." This is because I constantly find myself guilty of growing too attached to what I write and feel like I don't want to change anything in fear of messing up my writing. Then I usually end up going over my work right before the deadline, so even if I did want to do a good job revising or find things that I wish to change, I just don't have the time to thoroughly do so and lose my motivation. I definitely want to work on managing my time better and becoming more critical of what I write.
ReplyDeleteThis was a very helpful article with great advice to improve writing. The best tip I learned was how it said you can be a better writer by picturing yourself as the reader so you can see your mistakes from a less biased point of view. I personally need to work on this as I often reread my writing without changing anything, although there are several ways it could be improved. This also relates to the tip of not falling in love with your writing. Overall, this article gave me great advice that i will use in the near future.
ReplyDeleteThere were two tips in this article that really stood out to me. The first one explained how it's good to write as much as you can, because chances are there will be a good amount of material that needs to be cut out of the writing during revision. The second tip was how it's ok to revise as you write, but to not get too caught up in constantly editing because it's more important to be able to assess the bigger picture and edit from there.
ReplyDelete"Examine the balance within your paper: Are some parts out of proportion with others? Do you spend too much time on one trivial point and neglect a more important point?"
ReplyDeleteWhile some of the tips on the handout are specifically for revising essays, this tip is also very useful for revising narrative writing. The plot is the most important part of any story, so it should be the main focus. But without description and characterization, no one would care what happens in the story. Adjusting the balance of these elements in each paragraph can help the reader stay interested throughout the entire story.
the part in the article about thinking bigger and outside the box and the more you write the more you can cut down. Those were the two most helpful tips to me. If you write all your ideas down you can keep going over them until you find the ones you like best. Thinking outside the box can really help your writing be more creative and spontaneous.
ReplyDeleteThe tip I found most helpful, is reading your paper like you're reading it for the first time. I think it will be help make ideas more clear to readers. I find that sometimes I have a problem with giving the full detail in a story. I assume that because I already know what happened, my reader will too. By using this technique I think my pieces will be a lot clearer and make more sense to those reading it.
ReplyDelete"It’s an important step before turning your paper in, but if your ideas are predictable, your thesis is weak, and your organization is a mess, then proofreading will just be putting a band-aid on a bullet wound."
ReplyDeleteI definitely found this helpful since this is a lot of the editing I do. I do it to myself, and I do it to other people. Sometimes it can seem hurtful to get actual criticism on things you should fix instead of the typical proofreading, but it's necessary for real improvement.
What I found most helpful was "Don't fall in love with your work". I found this helpful because a lot of times when someone is writing something they could get too attached to certain parts of what they have written, but the important thing is that you should always be open to changing things around even if it is your favorite part for the greater good of the work.
ReplyDeleteGreat comments!!!
ReplyDelete