ACADEMIC WRITING: DRAFTING AND REVISING

Drafting and Revising - 1 ACADEMIC WRITING: DRAFTING AND REVISING By Andrew P. Johnson, Ph.D. Minnesota State University, Mankato [email protected] www.OPDT-Johnson.com Figure 4.1. An overview of the super-secret writing process. 1. Research to gather data. Usually this means finding credible sources, reading, and taking careful notes. 2. Pre-drafting. As the name implies, this is what is done before the first draft. This involves things such as planning, creating outlines, generating ideas, or finding structure. 3. First-draft. This is the first attempt to get ideas on the page. 4. Revise. This is the heart of the writing process. Here the writer re-reads, reshapes, gets feedback, and revises many times. 5. Editing. Editing should occur only after a piece has been revised several times. Here the writer looks for spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. 6. Share. This is the very last step. This is where the paper is sent out into the world. Extremely Rough First Draft In the last chapter I described how to organize the ideas from your notes into groups. As you put each idea from your printed notes into a group, use a highlighting marker to cross it off. These groups will provide an extremely flexible organizing structure to use to begin writing your extremely rough first draft. Once you have your ideas in groups you are ready for Step 3. Making a Clay Pot Writing is like making a clay pot. Here a potter takes a big glob of clay and throws it on a spinning wheel. The potter then spends a great deal of time shaping and molding the pot before finally putting it in the furnace to bake it. But without that big blob of clay on the wheel, there would be no pot. © Andrew P. Johnson, Ph.D. Drafting and Revising - 2 When you write you have to start with a big blob of ideas. This is called the draft. A draft is your first attempt to get ideas on the page. This should be done without regard to the final product. As I am writing this chapter I am throwing ideas on the page. I have an outline so I have a general sense of where I’m going, but I am essentially puking on the page. I know that I will have to go back many times to reread, revise, reshape, review, remove, and restate. Also, when I revise I will have to consider my audience. Right now I am picturing them to be mostly high school and college students. I will have to decide if using the vomit analogy is appropriate. Will it offend? Will it sell books? Will teachers and professors be able to look past this and select this book for their courses? These are all questions I will attend to during the revising stage. Embracing Contraries Writing involves two separate and diametrically opposed cognitive processes: generating ideas and evaluating ideas (Elbow, 1998). You need to put things on the page and you need to take things off. Both types of thinking are necessary during the writing process. But if you try to do both at the same time, you will clog of up the writing mechanism. You cannot write well if you are not first willing to write poorly. Thus, when you start your academic paper your goal should be to write garbage. Try to create a terrible paper. This will free you up to get your ideas on the page. During the revision process you will be moving your ideas around and throwing away much of what you write; thus, it makes little sense to polish at this stage. There will be time enough for this during the final revising stages. Some prefer to have their first drafts handwritten. This is a technique I often use. Keep in mind that there are no writing strategies that work best for all people all the time. © Andrew P. Johnson, Ph.D. Drafting and Revising - 3 Andy aside. If you think this chapter is poorly written, you should have seen the first draft. It was really bad. What you’re reading now is far different from what I originally put on the page. I had much more here than you currently see. But here’s the thing about the drafting process: as I was throwing ideas on the page, I came up with a couple of really good ideas that I hadn’t considered previously. Getting the little man in the yellow hat out of the way, that fellow who sits in my conscious mind editing all my thoughts, freed up my unconscious mind to make all sorts of connections and associations. I found lots of good ideas. I would be embarrassed to have you see what my first draft looked like. However, I knew I would be coming back to shape it later. I eventually added some things and took others out. And by taking out all the really bad ideas, my good ideas became more prominent. Revising: Making Many Visits Revising is at the heart of the academic writing process. When you revise you revisit a piece. During revision you will need to make many visits back to your writing. Whole-to-Part-to-Whole Revising works best when you go from whole to part to whole. Here is how you do it: 1. You cannot begin the revision process until you have a whole. This is your draft (see above). Only then are you able to begin the revision process. 2. Start with the first sentence. Make sure that sentence makes sense and that you use as few words as possible. In that sentence take out anything that does not absolutely need to be there. As you will see in a later chapter, good academic writing uses as few words as possible. 3. Then go the next sentence. Repeat the process above until you have completed all the sentences in the paragraph. 4. Now focus on that paragraph. Make sure the paragraph (a) says exactly what you want it to say, (b) does not repeat any ideas, and (c) uses as few words as possible. Reread this paragraph many times. Sometimes it is helpful to read the paragraph out loud to develop a writer’s ear. Do not move on until the paragraph sounds exactly right. 5. Now move to the next paragraph. Repeat the process starting with the first sentence. 6. When you have completed a section of your paper, reread, review, and revise it. Remove any paragraphs, ideas, sentences, or words that absolutely do not have to be there. Make sure each paragraph flows smoothly from one to the next (we will talk about transition sentences later on). When that section is just as you want it and when it flows smoothly from one paragraph to the next, go to the next section. Repeat the process starting with the first sentence. 7. When you have done this with each sentence, paragraph, and section; do this with the complete paper. © Andrew P. Johnson, Ph.D. Drafting and Revising - 4 Andy aside. Good academic writing reads like melted butter. It flows off the page. You cannot help but understand what the writer is trying to say. You don’t have to pause or reread to try to figure out awkward sentences or sudden shifts in subject. When you revise your goal should always be to create melted butter. Rereading, reviewing, and revising is the best way to create melted butter. It Is Not Complicated When revising you go from whole, to individual parts, back to whole. There is nothing overly complicated about this process. Follow the steps. Put your butt in the chair, take a deep breath, and just do it. Academic writing is easy. But I never said it was quick. Your Unconscious Mind Is Your Friend I have paused here. This chapter was not happening the way I wanted it to when I first set about to write it. I had much to say, but the words seemed to splatter all over the page in random fashion. Nothing was connected. When I read back what I had written, it all seemed so very wrong. The problem was I was thinking too much. This excess of logical thought made it very hard for my conscious mind to access the wealth of ideas bubbling in my unconscious. I needed to find a way to connect my conscious and unconscious mind. Power Write The power-write, as discussed briefly in Chapter 3, is an excellent way to tap into the power of your unconscious mind as you write. For my power-write I grabbed a pencil and legal pad, pulled out my notes, found an interesting idea to use to prime the pump, and started writing. I wrote down the first thing that popped into my mind. The ideas that began to appear on the page were strange and disjoined; however, I started to get a sense of where I wanted to go with this chapter. And the more I wrote, the more the ideas seemed to flow onto the page. In about seven minutes I had three pages of scribbled words, sentences, half-sentences, and even diagrams. Much of what I wrote was garbage; however, in that pile of garbage were three very good ideas that I had not considered before. Also, out of my pile of garbage I began to see the necessary structure for this chapter. My conscious mind could see how the parts might be put together to create a logical whole. Your unconscious mind is your writing ally. Undisturbed by conscious contamination, ideas grow here like bacteria in a petri dish. Listed below are three other techniques to use in order to tap into the power of your unconscious mind: Take a Nap It is difficult for most people to operate at peak mental efficiency for eight to ten hours straight. I find that a ten to twenty-minute power nap enables my conscious mind to become more refreshed and revitalized and in the process, allows my unconscious mind to burp up ideas that are lingering there. © Andrew P. Johnson, Ph.D. Drafting and Revising - 5 Do Something Else Leave your writing for a day and then come back. While you are off doing other things, your unconscious mind is still hard at work. This is why I encourage my students in my writing course to start their papers early in order to allow for some good unconscious percolating time. Think About Nothing A good way to think about something is to think about nothing. I know this sounds strange and a bit mystical, but it really works. To do this, find a quiet place where you can sit, relax, and get comfortable. Next, close your eyes, and begin to take long, slow, rhythmic breaths. With each breath, picture the air coming in through your nose, filling your body, and then leaving. Finally, empty your mind by thinking of a nonsense word such as “abba-dabba,” or “in-out.” Repeat this phrase with every inhalation and exhalation. Nature abhors a vacuum, and the vacuum you create will quickly be filled by a multitude of ideas. The Bone Pile When trying to communicate a coherent message, having too many words can be just as damaging as having too few words. Many times when writing and revising I find that I have too many words on the page and these sentences impede the flow of ideas. However, it is very difficult for me to throw things away once I have worked so hard to write them. A psychological trick I use in this situation is called the bone pile. Here I cut out those things that I think I can do without and move them down to the very bottom of the page in what I call the bone pile. This is a pile of discarded sentences and paragraphs. This gets them out of the way so I can see what I am working with; however, I know that I can still go back and retrieve them if necessary. This makes them much easier to pull out. Included below is my sample bone pile for this chapter. This bone pile is a garbage dump for old discarded ideas and thus, it should make little sense to you. Figure 4.2. Sample bone pile. Bone Pile - Again, the goal is to splash it on the page and keep moving on. You will come back to shape it later. - Words that do not exactly fit are more apt to cause your message not to be read or understood. - But, I did go back and research the writing manuals, as well as my own class notes to see what information I needed to convey about developing a sense of audience. - if that’s your goal ... - When you revise you revisit a piece. When you review you view it again. During revision you will make many visits back to your writing and view it many times. - Beginning academic writers often do not have a good sense of how their words should sound. With a great deal of writing practice, you will eventually develop a writer’s ear for the sound of the written language. - Listening to your own writing this way will always result in clarification for you. - Your notes are the fuel that powers the great writing m - If you think this chapter is poorly written, you should have seen the first draft. What you are reading is far different from what I originally put on the page. I knew I would be coming back to shape it later. I eventually added some things and took others out. - There are very few first-drafters in the world. These are writers who get it just right the first time. - However, knowing that I can come back and use discarded ideas makes it much easier to get them out. © Andrew P. Johnson, Ph.D. Drafting and Revising - 6 References Elbow, P. (1998). Writing without teachers, (2nd ed). New York, NY: Oxford University Press © Andrew P. Johnson, Ph.D.