The Joys of Revision Part 1

Teaching 7^th and 8^th graders how to write is lot different than being in an MFA creative writing program. One is the raw stuff of literacy, the rudimentary. The other is an exercise in sculpting art.  At work I spend a lot of time teaching children to think, speak, and write in sentences. Punctuation is a big part of my day. Periods and commas, capitals and quotes. Commas, yes. You teach commas to a 12 year old boy who only wants to be wrestling his friend to the floor. Highly literate and mature girls are also among my students. They enjoy writing and crafting meaningful work, and they care about how commas are used.

Bu no matter the writing ability, it seems the same problems persist in revising our rough drafts. When do we focus on organization and ideas, versus when do we edit for conventions and sentence craft?

The“writing process” model taught in schools emphasizes revision first, as if the student will simply shuffle around sentences, delete repetitions, and describe in more detail. The more advanced my student, the more possible it is for them to jump into this task. But if your sentences are gobbledy-gook, running on, fragmented, confused, you’ve got to fix them first. Your thoughts must be complete and comprehensible before they can be organized.

Some children will show me lengthy paragraphs with nary a period in sight. Or words so creatively spelled, or spell-checked, that we must correct. The more struggling the writer, the more important it is to edit first.

And what of myself? One might think, oh, she’s an educated person, an English teacher in possession of one Master’s Degree already. Surely her sentences are fine. After the initial copy editing, I should be ready to revise, re-organize, shape my essays into their long awaited form.

But if I’ve learned anything from the MFA program or my students, it’s that my word and sentence craft always needs work. Is my language concrete? Verbs active? Nouns specific? Are all my commas well placed or even necessary? Has the sentence lost its meaning in a rambling clause, or been overloaded with images? Or perhaps I’ve indulgently overused adjectives and ridiculously descriptive adverbs.

To what end does the careful sentence and word work illuminate the structure and the meaning of the written work? No doubt the more polished my writing is, the easier it is to work on structure and explore meaning.

Sometimes I sit down at a draft revision and I don’t know where or how to start making changes. So I begin at the beginning. I read and listen to each word, each sentence, attempting to craft for clarity, beauty, and meaning. Through this careful sentence and work word, ideas may spring, organizational problems may resolve, connections not seen will be brought to light.

Revise/edit, edit/revise. In the spiralic process of writing, I can’t always keep track. For me the revision/editing process is the opportunity to fall in love in with my own words, again and again.

I’m wondering how it works for other writers, teachers, and students. Feel free to share your thoughts on the process.

Next week, Joys of Revision 2!