Making and Unmaking:
Finding Agency in Revising Your Writing
Madeleine Barnes
One of the greatest assets a writer can possess is an understanding of the power of revision.
Strong and practiced writers know the importance and necessity of revising their own work, and they are motivated to learn how to revise creatively and effectively with an eye toward increased clarity, authenticity, and concision. New writers may view the job of writing done upon completion of a first draft, whereas more advanced writers understand the first draft to be a critical stepping stone into the writing process (Murray, 194-98). The former perspective is understandable, especially when a writer is new to the process or has yet to discover or identify what compels and interests them about their subject matter. If a writer can find a way to become invested in a writing project at its outset, whether by creating questions or defining potential areas of exploration and curiosity, the overall writing process becomes more adventurous and less daunting, revision included.
By definition, to revise is “to look at or consider again an idea, piece of writing, etc. in order to correct or improve it” (“Revision”). Revision can be considered an act of revisitation, circling back, or refining that helps a piece of writing evolve into a stronger and more creative iteration. A writer who possesses the curiosity, skillset, and determination to write and re-write has a great shot at producing a powerful, original, and clear final piece, whereas a writer who considers their first draft a final product may struggle to produce something as effective and compelling.
Writing is indeed an adventure, a multi-step process of discovery, and an act of observation that offers up the gift of one’s continuous individual attention, interest, and perspective to readers. Like many worthwhile adventures, writing and revising can feel daunting no matter how familiar you are with your own process and subject matter, and revision should be undertaken with a spirit of curiosity, courage, and play. A sense of openness and willingness to make mistakes and experiment will make the adventure more interesting and rewarding for the writer and readers alike. If you find yourself asking questions like, “Where should I begin? How do I connect these different parts? How will this piece end,” take heart — the adventure is underway. Keep generating questions, options, and potential pathways forward, and do not be afraid to include so-called “bad ideas” or to weave your personal thoughts and beliefs into your projects even if you anticipate editing them out later.
Revision may seem like a tedious process, but the knowledge that the first draft is not the final piece and therefore does not have to be perfect or even particularly good in order to lead somewhere can remove pressure from the writing process. If a first draft is only the beginning of expression and exploration, revision offers opportunities for writers to refine their message and its delivery. Writing and revision are both acts of learning and re-learning — the more we revise, the more we learn about our subject and gain an understanding of our own complex thoughts and beliefs. Every new draft a writer produces reveals growth and progress, and efforts to refine and improve your writing can teach you something new and help you create deeper questions and insights than you originally set out to explore.
Revision Tips
To help you begin thinking about revision, here are some revision tips and strategies. Feel free to take what feels useful and leave behind anything that does not.
Getting Started: In “Shitty First Drafts,” Anne Lamott reminds us that “almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something — anything — down on paper” (93-96). My mother, a poet and professor, tells her students three things about writing essays: “Done is better than good”; “I can’t grade air”; “Once you start, you’re halfway finished.” As a writer, these statements do two things for me: they make me laugh, and they help me relax enough to begin, trusting that the necessary magic of transformation will happen later on in the revision stage. I offer these same guiding statements to my students when teaching writing courses, joking that a first draft only has to offer a little more than air — scatter words on a page and you’re off to the races with the hardest part behind you. Creating distance from your work and letting it simmer for some time so you can come back to it again later with a fresh pair of eyes is an invaluable skill, and to know that you will revisit a piece more than once grants you the freedom to get your initial thoughts down at the beginning.
The notion that “done is better than good” is powerful when applied to the task of writing a first draft. When putting together your draft, your main job is to be present and receptive, and to get out of your own way as you record your ideas. Create a judgment-free zone where all ideas have potential and value. Treat your ideas as raw materials that you can and will shape and refine later on if you choose to work with them. Your instructors want to see these same materials and work with you to strengthen your piece, and I encourage you to ask for their advice if you feel lost or stuck. We are all beginners every time we sit down in front of a blank page to write, and your instructors want to help.
Trusting Yourself and Identifying Trusted Readers: It is important to develop trust in your voice, ideas, and abilities first and foremost. It can also be useful to identify trusted readers who understand you and your goals and can offer helpful feedback on your drafts without harshness. A friend, family member, or instructor can become a trusted reader. Some questions to ask yourself when identifying a potential trusted reader include: Do I trust and respect this person’s work? Can I trust this person to give a balanced view on my work that will help it succeed? Can this person deliver an honest opinion with kindness? When looking for a trusted reader, pay attention to classmates and instructors whose work you respect. There is also a lot of support available online — searching #WritingCommunity on X can lead to connections. The Writing Center is also a wonderful resource.
Asking for Feedback: It is important to be able to both accept and reject criticism of your work, and to view both positive and negative feedback as objectively valuable information that can help you reassess, reevaluate, and fortify your writing. It can be difficult at times to remember that feedback on your writing is not feedback on you as a person, and that you can expect to feel a range of emotions when asking for or getting feedback. That being said, it is completely acceptable to tell people what kinds of comments you find most helpful or unhelpful.
Engaging in the revision process is a way to develop trust in yourself as a writer — you are capable of learning, integrating new information, changing your mind, and developing interesting ideas. When you ask trusted readers for feedback, you can ask specific questions and provide open-ended comments on what areas you are struggling with. A friend of mine who regularly sends her drafts my way asks me identify three strengths and three areas where she can expand upon or clarify her ideas. I love that she provides such a specific ask because it increases the chances of my feedback being truly useful to her. Remember that it is just as important to identify a piece’s strengths as it is to identify areas of improvement. When revising, you might also consider asking someone who is not necessarily part of your intended audience for feedback so you can ensure that your piece is readable and accessible to readers who are not as familiar with your subject matter.
Challenging Limiting Beliefs: To become a skillful editor of your own writing, Donald Murray states that writers “must learn to be their own best enemy,” and to apply a blend of “caring and craft” to your work. The revision process might be difficult for anyone with perfectionist tendencies. A writer has to confront and make peace with imperfection — a difficult task for anyone to embark upon in this demanding and critical world, especially if the writer has lived experiences of being silenced or punished for speaking their truth or making their perspective known. Writers of all skill levels struggle with fears and insecurities. They might become overly critical, crossing out lines and tearing up drafts, viewing the task as one that they can never complete and therefore do not want to begin. Some difficult beliefs about yourself and your abilities might arise in relation to writing, especially if you have had critical or harsh intsturctors in the past. If you can name and acknowledge barriers you face when writing and commit to distancing yourself from them, their power will diminish. To write is to assert one’s point of view and to challenge exisiting narratives about oneself and the world. To approach your own work with care and craft instead of harshness is a radical act that can help you bring forth and capture certain truths and perspectives that need to be expressed.
Line-editing: The work of line-editing, or combing through your draft line by line, sentence by sentence, word by word can assist writers with the revision process. Anne Lammot describes a second draft as “the up-draft — you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy” (96). This kind of precise and attentive editing or “fixing up” will strengthen your piece.
Re-envisioning: Writer Natalie Goldberg encourages writers to see revision as “envisioning again” (Goldberg, 162-166). She encourages writers to look for areas of clarity and vagueness in their first draft. You can print out your draft and comb through it with a pen (or you can bold/underline fragments of your piece if you are working on a document on your computer). Underline your strongest, cleareset lines. Do this so that later on, when you start to revise, you can revisit one of your clear, strong, confident lines and continue developing your piece around that confident moment. Goldberg advises writers to look for overuse of words like “thing” or “something” when trying to identify areas that are less strong and concise. If you notice that you are dancing around a point or having trouble identifying your stance on a particular issue, you can note that an area, question, or stance is in need of strengthening.
Reading your work aloud: My friend swears by the following exercise. Print out your first draft and read it out loud. You might do this alone or in the company of a trusted friend. Sometimes, hearing your words spoken aloud can help you identify areas of weakness and strength that are less apparent otherwise. A poet friend of mine routinely does this with her poems and essays, and she finds this particularly useful because sound and rhythm are important elements to her. Reading your draft aloud can also assist you in creating a good pace and help ideas flow. Hearing your piece read aloud, whether by you or another person, can also help you identify unwanted repetition and either make cuts or replace repetitive words or phrases with fresher, more interesting language. Aim for harmony and variety, and pay attention to how words sound together — is there anything distracting that’s getting in the way of your message? Do you wish to make any changes so that your piece sounds more like “you?”
The Power of Audio: Using voice notes or transcription can also be useful if you are stuck. If you feel like you are unsure about how to proceed or find yourself dreading an element of your writing process, such as opening up a document on your computer, you might decide to take a break from your original writing mode and use different tools. If you have a voice memo app on your phone, you can record yourself talking about an area you want to expand upon and type it up later. If typing up your work on a computer feels overwhelming, consider asking a trusted reader to type up your comments as you speak them aloud for twenty minutes. Campus writing centers often have coaches and instructors who are happy to help with this process. Once, when I was stuck on a particular writing assignment, I turned up at my university’s writing center and scheduled an appointment. The instructor I worked with listened to my concerns and then asked me to “think out loud” about the piece and took down notes as I spoke, then emailed the notes to me afterward. When I told her how useful and freeing this was, she disclosed that she used this exact strategy to help many people complete their dissertations.
Using AI Tools: Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can also be incredibly useful in the revision process. Approaching AI tools with creativity and caution is advisable — these are blunt tools that make everyone’s prose sound the same, even if grammatically correct and formal. If AI tools are not used with caution and carefully reigned in, a writer’s piece risks becoming incredibly generic. Writers can ask an AI tool for suggestions on organization, tone, and vocabulary, but ultimately, nothing can replace your creativity and originality. You don’t want to risk sounding like everyone else or a machine with a canned response. Writing and revision are essential to ensuring that AI does not overtake decision-making; revision allows human agency to manifest itself so we can remain in control of our own destiny and perspectives. Writing and revision are hard but worth it, and revision allows us to reach a deeper understanding of what actions are appropriate for various issues. Even if we let AI produce a final draft or edit a finished draft, writers must still revise it to make sure our writing reflects human values.
Re-read Work By Authors Whom You Admire: If you find yourself struggling to revisit a draft, it can be helpful to set aside some time to revisit a few essays, poems, quotes, book chapters, or even song lyrics that remind you of what kind of writing you admire, enjoy, and aspire to. Taking even ten to fifteen minutes to read someone else’s work can get you into a generative, creative headspace.
Save Your Materials: An advisor I trust once advised me to keep my drafts (Word Docs, Google Drive Documents, printed out documents, and notebooks) so that in the future, I have the option to revisit old work and create something new from what was edited out or left behind. Specifically, he advised me to save things so that later on I could see what I wrote in the margins, or what I jotted down and skipped over. Time and distance can greatly change our perspective on what we find important or interesting, and treating all materials as potentially valuable can create a sense of playful generosity and preparation to revisit or circle-back one day. This advice might be somewhat divisive — as a writer, you will have to consider whether or not you want to “kill your darlings,” or cut parts of your writing that you are most proud of in order to create a better experience for readers. My advisor’s suggestion to treat everything as potentially generative stays with me, and I share it in the hopes that it may encourage generosity instead of ruthlessness. As you write and revise, think about leaving notes for your future self to revisit.
List Your Questions: As you think about your subject matter or your goals for a specific project, you might find yourself clouded by questions. Instead of trying to fight off your questions, keep an ongoing “questions list” in a notebook, a Notes app, or a pile of notecards. Assume that no question is too silly or unserious to exclude from this list. It can be private, or you can create a collaborative document with a friend. Let yourself ask potentially “ridiculous” questions and aim to leave them unanswered for the time being. Do a freewrite focused on questions you have about your piece, or questions that are on your mind that are seemingly only tangentially related. List out your questions with the knowledge that you can later choose to weave these questions into your piece in the future. No matter what, this list might be fun to look back on and it may provide you with inspiration and jumping off points for future projects.
Concluding Notes
Revision is a tremendous resource that allows writers to improve, extrapolate, play, flourish, and ensure that we have a good chance of reaching the audiences we write for. Revision also puts us in touch with our own capacity for growth, curiosity, and reflection. Some questions we have are not answerable, or they can be answered in numerous ways depending on the person engaging with them. You are free to explore your questions and write about how it feels to do so. By writing and revising, you open the door for someone else to explore and write about similar subjects with the same curious spirit. Sometimes, the notion that we have to produce a rigid, concrete, unchanging piece or argument that answers incredibly difficult or unsolvable question can prevent us from engaging with the revision process. But it is human and beautiful and interesting to write your way through questions and look at the world with openness and a willingness to change your mind as you incorporate and integrate new ideas and information into your work. Being willing to identify what you do not know in addition to what you do know will strengthen your credibility and relatability as a writer.
It is said that no piece of writing is ever truly finished, and that at some point, you will have to stop revising your work in order to avoid editing it to death. Many writers do not reach this point, though, so I encourage you to over-write. You may find agency in over-writing, revising multiple times, or in choosing when to stop revising a piece — the editorial decisions you make can be an intentional form of self-expression. I encourage you to allow yourself to go overboard and to jot down all of your “bad ideas” with a sense of humor and an eye toward originality. I urge you to seek out and cultivate relationships with people who do not deliver feedback in a harsh and punishing way. Find people who can point out areas of strength with enthusiasm and encourage your growth and the experimentation necessary to the development of your unique voice. Above all, keep asking questions and allow yourself to treat writing as an adventure enacted and recorded from your valuable perspective. You do not have to know everything there is to know, or express all there is to express about your subject matter — rather, your job is to be curious and to write as best you can about what interests and compels you in this world. Allow yourself to revisit the sites of your curiosity as many times as you want or need to, and to write in the spirit of imperfection, adventure, and generosity.
For more revision resources, please visit the Baruch College Writing Center: blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/writingcenter/
Works Cited
Goldberg, Natalie. “Rereading and Rewriting.” Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, 1986, pp. 162–166.
Lamott, Anne, et al. “Shitty First Drafts.” Language Awareness: Readings for College Writers, 9th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, Boston, 2005, pp. 93–96.
Murray, Donald M. “The Maker’s Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts.” Language Awareness: Readings for College Writers, Bedford/St. Martin’s, Boston, 2013, pp. 194–98.
“Revision.” The Cambridge Dictionary, dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/revision.