I am not the world’s best reviser. It’s a long, hard, drawn-out process for me. I can spew out words quickly and easily, usually, but then going back and making it better — now that’s hard. I’ve spent a good chunk of today revising an essay for an online collection on masculinity, but I’ve still got a lot of work to do. When I was working on my thesis, revision was the hardest part. Reorganizing chapters 1 and 3 caused me more stress than almost any part of the process. But alas, I am learning to be more patient with my writing and more focused on revision, though it’s so easy to distract myself when revising and find something else to work on. Tomorrow morning: more revision and then some reading of student work.
About Michael J. Faris
Assistant Professor of English with research areas in digital literacy, privacy and social media, and queering rhetorics.
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Ah, so that’s what you were working on with Marjie in the writing center Friday. Good luck with that!
I usually don’t have that much stress with revising, but I am this time. But it’s probably because this time my first draft really was not a first draft — it was more of a bunch-of-clumps-of-paragraphs. So now I have untangle and reorganize. This is the first time in my academic career that I’ve had to have a draft ready for a peer reviewer (or for anyone) before turning in “the” paper. So I rushed to throw something together. And now the revision is probably harder because of all the untangling I have to do.
On the other hand, having to complete that peer review draft did help me a lot when it comes to focusing my research in one area, keeping me from reading too widely (since I don’t have time for that).
Actually, I was working with Marjie on my personal statement for grad school applications. Yet another piece of writing to revise.
I found that I did more revisions for papers in Vicki’s classes than any other. She knows how to push writers to improve (at least how to push me as a writer). I never thought of the benefit of peer review that it could narrow down research scope more quickly. That’s probably because I’m so bad at narrowing my scope anyway that it didn’t help me in that regard.
Good luck!