Some Revising Issues You Might Encounter
New to revising your writing? Don’t worry, we all thought we could write first drafts that read flawlessly (or, at most, required nothing more than a grammar checker), only to discover the world didn’t exactly work the way we imagine it.
- Refusal to remove any part of your work. This one’s common, especially for unseasoned writers who have worked laboriously on a piece. Upon closer inspection, it may be in your best interest to cut out certain paragraphs and eliminate a few parts, but the pain of having to strip something you’ve worked so hard to do just makes it overly difficult.
- Falling in love with your writing. One writer I met gave me this advice: find your favorite passage in every draft you write and remove it. While I still do feel that’s taking it too far, the message is clear – if you fall in love with your writing, you cannot objectively examine it. In this case, setting the work aside for some period of time (like a day or so) should help. Of course, the part about throwing away your favorite passage can work too.
- Too much rewriting necessary. This usually happens when you review your work and end up with serious doubts about your primary points. You have several choices in this situation: you can pray the reader doesn’t notice, change your work completely to reflect your new viewpoint or simply acknowledge the contradiction. The first one can lead to disaster; the second will probably take too long than you have time for; the third lets you keep your work intact, although you’ll need to provide a reason why it still holds up, despite the existence of issues.