As writers we tend to cringe at the word and task of revision depending on our experience and strategy of it, how we can use it to benefit our writing and to just merely look at revision as a punishment or sign that our writing needs improvement. Most of us don’t really understand what we are supposed to revise or take out, add or delete during the writing process. Sometimes it takes others to look at our work for us, stepping back and letting the writing gestate with feedback or a new perspective of what content doesn’t apply or if we are being redundant, repeating the same ideas but just including different wording. Revision and failure are inevitable, and we should be open to them as processes of writing. We should not be in the mindset of avoiding these inevitable functions but learning from them and benefiting from what we can gain from those stages of edits at our various stages as a writer. Revision should be looked at as a tool in our belt, a necessary discipline or constructive criticism that will only benefit us the more susceptible to it.
Revision is approached and decided differently depending on the experience of the writer and the external factors, expectations that their writing holds adhering to a set of rules or guidelines that they may feel makes their writing is competent enough producing only a first draft and not requiring any revision. Those with this idea will not get their ideas on paper and to a point of completion they could off with a few revisions and letting their guard down some. This can result in thinking like we are not living up to the expectations of our readers or have the skills needed to be a writer, second guessing our process or what even needs revision. But it should be viewed as the opposite and an opportunity to build upon an idea from our writing and take us to the final version that will include the best of our abilities from feedback and revised drafts that were not clear or to the point in the beginning stages.
Strategies are needed to how writers can best approach the revision process best suited for them during the writing process and should not consider our work to be finished before any revisions are made to the paper. Such benefits of revision are not being understood to how we can grow from them. Students think that they got their point across using the correct vocabulary and rules of language answering the thesis statement and feeling revision doesn’t apply to them. Not realizing that reordering their text, making edits along the way, finding new ways of revision will benefit their language of writing, phrases and clarity.
Having a new lens and focal point to look through, not trying to please or produce in the name of composed research or what is expected by rules of writing, making their teachers pleased following a rubric. A new perspective is always helpful and should be accepted and expected during the process and development of our writing. Revision becomes a necessary skill related to our writing and will only benefit us as we move forward. It’s like swinging a hammer as a blacksmith and forming the iron, the more precise and accurate you are with hitting a certain spot each time the better the final product will be, and the time spent getting there. The end results will be noticeable to everyone to the customer, in this case our reading audience.
Strategies and consistent revision is needed to give us a formula of the most useful approaches and mindset to the revision process as well as the function behind revision and failure. It should be communicated that these are sign posts that you are going in the right direction when making revisions.
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