Podcast: WHy Revision is Not Editing
Script for Podcast 2
Glynis Benbow-Niemier
E2740
Hello and welcome to this writing workshop podcast: Why Revision Is Not Editing. My name is Glynis Benbow-Niemier, your instructor, this semester. Today, I want to talk about what revision is and what it is not.
I am guessing, when you hear the term revision you may groan and immediately think about red ink or copyediting marks left by teachers or peer-editors in the margins of your essays. You may think it means “fixing things” like grammar and spelling mistakes, or you may think it means making sure you have an attention grabber, clear thesis statement, or transitions between paragraphs, but these are all part of editing. Revision comes before all of these things: revision begins during your drafting process.
So, what is revision, if it is not editing? Revision is part of discovering what it is you want to say in your writing. It is part of your essay’s process of becoming. Revision means to “re-see” in its most basic and literal meaning, and it is one of the most difficult and complex tasks writers learn because what one rough draft needs is not necessarily the same thing as what another needs.
Writing an essay is rarely a sequential process, where you begin with the introduction and write all the way to the conclusion in a logical fashion.
Good writing is a much messier and chaotic enterprise: you may begin writing with one idea and discover your actual topic at the end of two pages. What do you do? You may have a great opening line, but you have no idea where to go after that. What do you do? Your draft begins with an issue and ends with a personal story. What do you do? You have two drafts begun, but they seem to overlap. What do you do?
In this workshop, we will begin to develop strategies to address these things, so you feel prepared to the meet the often messy and unpredictable business of writing.
As we move through the semester writing and reading each other’s work, I would like you to think about the following tenets of revision:
The first is that revision begins with the generation of ideas and the suspension of disbelief: in other words, you need to feel that anything is possible –no word, no idea, is too trivial to put down.
Second: revision, like the rest of writing, is not a sequential process. You are not always moving forward through a progression of better and better drafts. Revision does not always succeed in making a better piece of writing: you may go back to an earlier draft, you may end up taking the best of two drafts and merging them, or you may take one draft and spilt it into two different pieces of writing.
The third thing I want you to remember is that revision involves collaboration. We so often think of writing as a solitary process, but a good deal of writing is communal: writers share ideas with fellow writers, editors, and readers; they ask for many kinds response from their readers depending on where they are in their writing processes. This is a workshop precisely, so you can experience this communal aspect of writing.
The fourth thing I want you to think about is that revision involves good listening in both a literal and a metaphorical sense; what I mean by this is you need to listen to what your peers and other readers actually say about what they think your writing is doing or meaning; and, you also need to listen to what you think your piece of writing is meaning and doing. These two things may come on conflict with each other—as Peter Elbow says, the writer is always right and the reader is always right—but it is your piece of writing and you, in the end, have control of what it becomes, but hopefully, with an enlarged sense of possibilities from what you have learned from your readers.
The last, and sometimes most difficult part of revision, is that revision often disturbs form. We often get stuck in the way we first inscribe a piece—the way we first put it down on paper, or the kind of essay we have envisioned, but revision very often means disrupting that order and form to get to piece of writing which is more complex and rich with meaning.
So, to conclude, revision happens long before you reach the editing of your writing. Revision involves change: revision involves re-seeing your writing.
Glynis Benbow-Niemier
E2740
Hello and welcome to this writing workshop podcast: Why Revision Is Not Editing. My name is Glynis Benbow-Niemier, your instructor, this semester. Today, I want to talk about what revision is and what it is not.
I am guessing, when you hear the term revision you may groan and immediately think about red ink or copyediting marks left by teachers or peer-editors in the margins of your essays. You may think it means “fixing things” like grammar and spelling mistakes, or you may think it means making sure you have an attention grabber, clear thesis statement, or transitions between paragraphs, but these are all part of editing. Revision comes before all of these things: revision begins during your drafting process.
So, what is revision, if it is not editing? Revision is part of discovering what it is you want to say in your writing. It is part of your essay’s process of becoming. Revision means to “re-see” in its most basic and literal meaning, and it is one of the most difficult and complex tasks writers learn because what one rough draft needs is not necessarily the same thing as what another needs.
Writing an essay is rarely a sequential process, where you begin with the introduction and write all the way to the conclusion in a logical fashion.
Good writing is a much messier and chaotic enterprise: you may begin writing with one idea and discover your actual topic at the end of two pages. What do you do? You may have a great opening line, but you have no idea where to go after that. What do you do? Your draft begins with an issue and ends with a personal story. What do you do? You have two drafts begun, but they seem to overlap. What do you do?
In this workshop, we will begin to develop strategies to address these things, so you feel prepared to the meet the often messy and unpredictable business of writing.
As we move through the semester writing and reading each other’s work, I would like you to think about the following tenets of revision:
The first is that revision begins with the generation of ideas and the suspension of disbelief: in other words, you need to feel that anything is possible –no word, no idea, is too trivial to put down.
Second: revision, like the rest of writing, is not a sequential process. You are not always moving forward through a progression of better and better drafts. Revision does not always succeed in making a better piece of writing: you may go back to an earlier draft, you may end up taking the best of two drafts and merging them, or you may take one draft and spilt it into two different pieces of writing.
The third thing I want you to remember is that revision involves collaboration. We so often think of writing as a solitary process, but a good deal of writing is communal: writers share ideas with fellow writers, editors, and readers; they ask for many kinds response from their readers depending on where they are in their writing processes. This is a workshop precisely, so you can experience this communal aspect of writing.
The fourth thing I want you to think about is that revision involves good listening in both a literal and a metaphorical sense; what I mean by this is you need to listen to what your peers and other readers actually say about what they think your writing is doing or meaning; and, you also need to listen to what you think your piece of writing is meaning and doing. These two things may come on conflict with each other—as Peter Elbow says, the writer is always right and the reader is always right—but it is your piece of writing and you, in the end, have control of what it becomes, but hopefully, with an enlarged sense of possibilities from what you have learned from your readers.
The last, and sometimes most difficult part of revision, is that revision often disturbs form. We often get stuck in the way we first inscribe a piece—the way we first put it down on paper, or the kind of essay we have envisioned, but revision very often means disrupting that order and form to get to piece of writing which is more complex and rich with meaning.
So, to conclude, revision happens long before you reach the editing of your writing. Revision involves change: revision involves re-seeing your writing.