Revising a Paper

By examining the ideas in the essays Freewriting by Peter Elbow and The Makers Eye: Revising your own manuscripts by Donald Murray. One can gain a better understanding of the process of turning a piece of writing from an inspiration into a craft. By examining the elements lined out in each essay can be beneficial in creating a piece of writing that is beyond a college or student level. Elbows essay lines out the importance of a strong prewriting regimen. That editing too early can ruin writing. He believes that by using the method of free writing, it can inspire ideas that may be limited when worrying about grammar. While Murray emphasizes the necessity to create many drafts to form writing into its full potential. Saying each draft is an opportunity to discover what the author has to say and they the best way to say it. By transforming writing into its maximum potential it goes from being an idea an inspiration a masterpiece.

I finally figured out why, Writing the same paper for the second time while staring at the first draft comes out better than the last. For years I’ve done this and never considered it to be a method writers use to better themselves. Donald M. Murray defines this writing as revision where the author continuously edits his or her words to clarify their purpose. We all can put words on paper, but true writing comes with placing the right words at the right time, that says exactly what you want to say. Within Murray’s “The Maker’s Eye,” which goes in depth about revising, He mentions a final product mentality to holds academic writer back. Readers are always shown a polished version of the words on paper, and transitively assume that was a first draft creation. Murray introduced lots of new ideas to me about ways of approaching revision, and how it truly should take.

In his article "Coming to Terms", Joseph Harris takes the opportunity to share his knowledge with his readers and discuss things to keep in mind when drafting, revising, and editing assignments. In this specific chapter, Harris explains the revision process and suggest possible preliminary steps to take when formulating an essay. He emphasizes revision as a knowledge practice, in which there is a consistent set of questions you can ask yourself at any point while working on a draft (page 99). In addition, Harris refers the term "writer's project" throughout the section.

In “Reflective Writing and Revision Process”, Sandra Giles talks about the importance of reflective writing. She mentions that before she thought reflective writing was a waste of time and she just wrote her it to please her teacher, but it was not supposed to be like that. Reflective writing is supposed to talk about purpose of the essay, and then sets goals for revision. Through reflections, the students can change their audience if needed, make changes about the writing styles and the words choice, as well as figuring out the problems within their essays to improve them. The professors can also give feedbacks after reading their students’ memos and reflections. Throughout the whole essay, Giles includes several samples of reflective writings.

When students complete a first draft, they consider the job of writing done – and their teachers too often agree. When professional writers complete a first draft, they usually feel that they are at the start of the writing process. When a draft is completed, the job of writing can begin. That difference in attitude is the difference between amateur and professional, inexperience and experience, journeyman and craftsman. Peter F. Drucker, the prolific business writer, calls his first draft “the zero draft”–after that he can start counting. Most writers share the feeling that the first draft, and all of those which follow, are opportunities to discover what they have to say and how best they can say it. To produce a progression of drafts, each of which says more and says it more clearly, the writer has to develop a special kind of reading skill. In school we are taught to decode what appears on the page as finished writing. Writers, however, face a different

Within the past eight weeks, I have realized my strengths and weaknesses within the writing process. I have realized that I do not utilize the first step within the writing process of prewriting. However, for the drafting, revising, and polishing steps of the writing process, I am very familiar and use additional resources to strengthen the writing assignment. I create multiple drafts, which includes revising and polishing in each step. Therefore, I use all three of these steps in multiple drafts as I reach the final product for

The comparison of revising to sculpting relates to how I view my revision process to be. I like to make my rough draft as complete as I can and then go back to fix little things for my revision. This is like the sculpting metaphor because in sculpting you start with something as whole, like me making my rough draft as complete as it can be, then you go back and keep working on it until you have ended up with what you were looking for, in this case a sculpture or a complete paper. I find this way of revision to be beneficial because I think it is always best to get everything down the first time so you and your peers have more to work with later on and

The revision strategy for myself that will be most effective for writing this essay would be to

One of my biggest challenges was accepting the fact that I had numerous habits that I developed in high school which were restricting my creativity. After reading Revising Attitudes by Brock Dethier, I now know that your first draft isn’t meant to be perfect. While writing drafts you need to let it go and not try to perfect anything. A rough draft is called rough for a reason. As a perfectionist, it was hard for me to comprehend the fact that I need to let go. I quickly found out that this would end up being one of my biggest weaknesses. I became frustrated with myself since I couldn’t figure out ways to revise my essay that had obvious problems. I was able to learn from my mistakes from the last assignment and avoid them. I now know to start narrowing your topic down when brainstorming your topic. Then you would continue to be more specific as you do your initial research. This helped me be crystal clear with what I wanted to write about and in the end helped me figure out which claims

Revision part of the outcome is that I write out all my essays for the class then revision of my essays at the end. The one essay that I revision was the concept essay because I wrote it out first for rough draft then I look through and look for any little items in my essay that I can change. Then we also did some peer editing in class with some classmates that also contribute to the revision of the concept essay.

Revising has never really been my strongest point when it comes to writing papers. Usually when I would write papers whether it would be in high school or even for myself I would just turn it in the way it was and not even attempt to revise the paper and would get good grades on them. Even if I would revise them then all I would check is the word placement and commas to see if they all were correct and then turn it in for the final grading and I would always get a high grade on the paper. This year I really had to learn to revise better and I

As your paper finally slides into that dreadful homework basket, you realize you are finally done. That stressful weekend, with the anticipation, the typing, reading, re-reading and retyping. Is finally over, you have now handed in your essay. Does this sound familiar? Of course, it does! We have all worked on that English or history paper and felt relief after handing it in. But, why is this common event always so stressful for students? Perhaps it is in the way we write our essays, but is there any other way to do it? As it turns out… YES! There are many different strategies to writing, and in this editorial, we will outline some of the most commonly voiced methods.

One’s writing is not always perfect. The idea that perfection lies within a piece of written work is justifiably erroneous. In an excerpt entitled, “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott, Lamott explores how writing as a whole is a revisiting process. Lamott opens by simply stating, “all good writers write them [shitty first drafts].” She then goes on to address how people view successful writers as enthusiastically approaching writing and that it is ultimately “easy” to compose a piece of work; Lamott states that this notion is merely a “fantasy of the uninitiated.”

Essay development- The parts of writing an essay are prewriting, outlining, drafting, editing, revision, and final drafting.

When you finish, reread the essay to check for all of the points above, and then proofread it to be sure your work does not contain errors in grammar or spelling.