Revisions, and why we do them

It's that time of year again, where teachers and students get down to the business of learning.  As many of you know, I teach writing.  And part of writing, and of teaching writing, is revision.  I have a fairly short assignment that I'm doing with one of my classes, one for which I asked students to submit a draft last week so that I could go through and suggest changes.  Only about half the class sent drafts to me originally, then I had a few stragglers submit theirs after the initial ones were returned.  I still have yet to see about a quarter of the assignments.

After the first batch of suggestions and edits, I told students several times to re-submit their work so that I could go over it again.  Less than half of those who submitted have done this, but more are trickling in now that I've begun to hand those back.

Those that haven't submitted drafts by now are out of luck, as the assignment's due next week and I don't see them again until Tuesday.  Of those who've only submitted a first draft, several have asked why they'd need to submit again, considering, as they put it, "You've already corrected all the mistakes, so why bother?"  Then there's the third group, some of whom are horrified to receive a second edited / commented draft that seems to have more writing on it than the first.

I think I'm going to have to put a handout together on the stages of editing, explaining what instructors (and editors) are looking for in the various drafts of a document.

Personally, I like to do at least four sets of revisions.  The first set focuses on larger problems, the most significant of which are barriers to reader comprehension.  The second set focuses on logic, flow, and (for technical writing) accuracy of content.  The third set involves a closer look at document flow, and a first-pass detailed edit.  It's not until the fourth set of revisions that I'm looking to do a detailed copy edit ... and that's if we've managed to get to this stage, as sometimes I have to do two or three passes looking for and fixing barriers to comprehension.

The long and short of it is that multiple edits are needed, especially if you want to produce the best possible document, whether it's a technical report, a poem, or a novel.

Thinking about writing

We're back home, with a mountain of stuff to unpack, after having spent seven weeks at the lake, with somewhat limited Internet access; hence the dearth of posts over the last few weeks.

I'd love to say that I wrote lots, every day, but it didn't happen.  I was too busy having fun and doing stuff with the kids, and while I didn't do a lot of actual writing, I did do a lot of thinking, which got me thinking about thinking about writing.  Convoluted, I know, but there's a point here, if only a small one.

Sometimes, it's the thought that counts the most, the time spent behind the scenes before we put pen to paper and begin writing.  It's all the daydreaming, pontificating, whatever-you-want-to-call-it that we do when a character or idea is born.  It might not be present on the page that particular day, but a few scribbled notes is usually sufficient for later, for remembrance.  It's time spent exploring ideas, options, and the minutiae of a character or idea, background work, if you will, for when that character of idea is brought to life.  And it doesn't always have to happen before, but I really do think that it needs to happen to add the depth, breadth, and real-ness that our characters and ideas need.

So while this brief post, written in the midst of a seeming sea of Rubbermaid tubs begging to be unpacked, might seem only tangentially related to editing, I'm a firm believer that putting the thought into characters and ideas before editing is something truly worth thinking about.  Off now to ponder my latest project while putting away a summer's worth of clothes, toys, and other detritus.