Why they call it the Revision “Process”

A bit of free time in my schedule (thanks, snow and ice!) over the past two weeks allowed me to finalize and send off an article.  It will be published in Winter 2012. I started it in 2005.  7 years--SEVEN YEARS-- from inception to print for a 25-page essay.

The process that an academic article goes through is similar, intentionally, to the process of drafting and revising your essays in this class will go through.  Here are the steps:

1. Submit draft for PEER REVIEW and COMMENTS:

I picked the right journal for my essay, so my essay wasn’t immediately rejected, but was sent to outside readers for evaluation.  This is called peer review, or scholarly review.  The people who read, and commented on, my work are scholars in the same field that I work in (peers).  They recommended one of three options: publish, don’t publish or, more commonly, “revise and resubmit.”  That’s what I got.

You should see the similarities for this class:  You submit your conference draft.  I read and comment (no option for rejecting them!). You also participate in a peer workshop.  Your classmates are your peers and, like in scholarly review, they are readers who are qualified to evaluate your work because you are all working on similar lines of thinking.

2. Receive and evaluate comments.  Begin REVISING and RETHINKING.

I initially received two set of comments; on other essays, I’ve received three.  The two sets of comments suggested that I do two literally opposing things to revise the essay. So, as I set out to revise I had to take the comments into consideration, but I also had to make some real decisions about what I WANTED the essay to do.  The comments didn’t give me a template to follow for producing an excellent essay--they gave me feedback about what I was already saying and suggested new lines of thinking.

For you:  You’ll get my comments and some feedback from your peers. How do you sort it out? Is my feedback necessarily better than your peers’? What if you get conflicting advice? What if the advice you get doesn’t line up with what you’re trying to say? Yep, YOU have to decide what advice to take, what to reject, and ultimately what you want your essay to be.

3. Dither and work on revising the essay for 2 or 3 years. Move across the country and pack up all of your research so it’s hard to get back to the essay.  Completely change directions and force yourself to write entire new sections.

Lucky you:  Deadline is coming right up. Skip to step 4.

4. Finalize the essay. PROOFREAD and EDIT.

Once the editor accepted the revised version (this often takes more than one round of revisions), it was time to prepare the manuscript for publication and that means EDITING.  Editing is different from revising.

 

Revising: new thinking, new research and reading, new paragraphs, changing the thesis. 

Editing: proofreading, putting in citations, checking and rechecking the exact wording of each quotation, considering your word usage and tone.

I’ve worked, happily, with journals that do some of the editing for me. But in this case, unhappily because I’m not a good proof reader, I was on my own.  Hello ruler, red pens, style manual, dictionary, and several days of headache.

For you:  The stakes aren’t quite as high here--you won’t be publicly shamed if something is misquoted. But you do need to proof read for typos, spelling errors, and make sure your citations are correct.  One reason professional writers like help at this stage is that it’s hard to proofread and copy edit your own essay.  But you can have a friend or peer help you.  You can also get some help with this kind of work at the writing center although you shouldn’t expect the writing tutors to simply copy edit your whole essay--and it is you who is still responsible for the final product! 

5. Turn it in:  Sure, there’s stress in making the deadline, but don’t you feel relieved that you have to finish and that the class doesn’t last 7 years?