Editing

At some point, you will have taken your notes, applied them to some kind of structure (possibly an outline) and gotten some kind of rough draft. If you are very, very careful, and even more lucky, you can sometimes get away with turning in a rough draft as a finished product, but the quality of your work will improve so much with a once-over edit, it's really worth it, particularly if you use a computer or word processor of any kind, which takes away any possible inconvenience involved.

It is usually a bad idea to proofread and edit right after you've finished writing. For some reason, human brains tend to get numb to things they have been staring at, and the error you just made is the one you're least likely to see. Do something else for a few days (or at least a few hours!) and come back to it when your senses are refreshed.

When you are rereading, you should look at a number of levels of your writing (maybe all at once or maybe separately). Watch the flow of writing from paragraph to paragraph. Is the paper a solid, integrated whole? Or is there a section that just seems to appear out of the blue? How can you connect it? etc.... Dialogue with the writing as you go. Ask yourself why you said a certain thing. Put yourself in another's shoes and imagine whether the logic is understandable. Does this bit here really mean what you wanted it to mean? And of course, watch for spelling errors, punctuation, words and paragraphs in the wrong place, and so on.

Fixing errors is a skill all its own. Ideally, we would all have the time to type out hundreds of pages twice, and that would be that. But as time progresses, you will probably find yourself adept at the fine art of making an "s" look like an "a" with a pen stroke or two, of making commas into semicolons, and (in extreme cases) whiting out the descending bar of a "p" to change it into an "o." In fact, white-out is an amazing tool when handled with care (although it does happen to be environmentally disastrous). For larger omissions or paragraph switches, a small pair of scissors and a glue stick are very handy. They got the computer term "cut and paste" from the real thing, you know.

Finally, watch out for crippling self-doubt; this is when it strikes hardest. Don't bother proofreading your own work if you know that you'll get so paralyzed with self-criticism that nothing will get done. Nobody wins if every single word gets needlessly redlined seventeen times. Just ask someone else to proofread it for you. That way, you spare your own energy, the other person learns something, you'll probably have a good discussion about the material afterwards (reflection and dialogue!) and you'll get a more accurate picture of your abilities. Following is some material on peer editing from the 1991 Handbook of Inspiration:

PEER EDITING
April 24, 1991

Minutes by Jana:
	This session was meant to be an informal one on peer editing.  
We each took about forty minutes to write individually on a subject of 
our choice.  Many of us worked on a piece related to our work this 
semester, such as the rough draft of an essay we wanted to write.  
After the writing, we split up into a pair and a threesome (one person 
had to leave) to read and discuss each other's work.  The emphasis was 
on constructive criticism and discussion of how the piece might be 
developed.	We also discussed various issues that came up such as 
"How much detail and basic information should we include in our 
Journals?"  and "Who is the audience?"  If there is too much detail 
then it can be boring, but if there is too little the reader won't 
understand.  Should we write from our point of understanding or for 
the advisor who may know little about the subject?
	We talked about the Journal Writing Workshop itself and how 
helpful it has been this semester.  Katherine suggested one should be 
set up at all the centers, not as a mandatory class but as a drop-in 
workshop, as ours is.  For us it has been an important source of ideas 
and encouragement and a place to compare notes on writing, making the 
process of Journal-writing a less isolated experience.
	As usual we got together at the end of the session and made 
comments:

Angelica:  We (Katherine and I) talked about interviews.  I 
did the exercise of writing the interviews in another way, but found 
it impossible to write objectively.  You have to write true to your 
own point of view.  

Katherine:  I hate writing a first draft and showing it to 
people.  It was good to be able to show it to someone and get their 
opinion on what should be emphasised, changed and so on.  People 
should do more sharing of their work.  Maybe we could leave a box in 
the resource room where the people could leave their work for other 
people to read and maybe make comments on.

Miho:  Having a different point of view is always helpful.  It 
was inspiring to hear the others (Natasha and Jana).  I thought I 
could use more feeling in my work, not just tell the facts.

Natasha:  It was helpful when Miho asked, "How did you connect 
that?" and I realized it wasn't really connected.  You write something 
and you think it makes sense but if you read it over or aloud it 
doesn't always.  I'd like to go through a speech I wrote to see if it 
makes sense.

Workshop Discussion Sparks

Inspired and Creative

Organize peer editing sessions.

Rigorous Training

Anything you use to practice writing, you can use to practice editing!

AAAAAGGGHHHH!

Just remember to be constructive, not destructive.

See Also

NOTE TAKING (G.6)
OUTLINES (G.1)
FORMAL PAPER WRITING (D.1)
DIARY AS TOOL (C.3)
QUESTIONING ASSUMPTIONS (C.2)
PRIORITIZATION (G.3)
INTEGRATION (C.5)
RELEVANCE AND DIALOGIC LEARNING (C.4)
Any English grammar book
The Transitive Vampire (a fun guidebook to proper grammar)
Strunk & White's A Manual of Style

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