“…For Most of us revisions is the only road to success”

This phrase within the text can be applied to real life as well, in terms of the road to success. Throughout life, there are many obstacles that one had to face and overcome. This can be seen with writing and revision, as people often has to fix the multiple parts of a draft until it feels right to the author. For many people, it is important that they revise and make new drafts of their work. Through feedback from others or just new ideas, it allows for a writer to improve upon what they have already written. They would go through many trails in order to write something that would make them satisfied.

Car Metaphor

The metaphor of the car is a good way to show the process of writing and completing an essay. The first draft can be used to refer to the key components and engines that would make the car function and move. Then the editing process makes the car run at its best, trying different parts so that the car would run with the most efficiency. In writing, it is the revisions on the first drafts that suggests changes that can improve the first draft. Certain parts of the essay could be changes, removed, or added in order for the draft to feel more complete. Then there are the changes following suit, which focuses much more on detail and might have a huge impact on the piece without seeming it. In the car situation, it can be seen with the coat of paint which makes a car seem new and at it’s best. In writing, it is very similar, as some changes has impacts on the overall tone and message of your writing. The car metaphor the Dethier states is a great comparison on the editing process in writing an essay.

“Good Writing is essentially rewriting”

In a sense, revision is going to lead to changes that are going to be made toward the draft. People’s feedback suggests to writers on what aspects of the essay work and what don’t, which gives the writer a sense of direction in which they should take when writing the essay. Through this changing process, a lot of times people delete parts of their essay and replace them with new ideas. Rewriting leads to good writing, as better sentences can be incorporated and replace preexisting one that might not have been as effective. These changes that authors makes when editing, has big impact on the quality of their writing, so it is important for people to be open about rewriting certain parts of their work.

1. On page 117 of “Revising Attitudes” Brock Dethier writes “…For most of us, revision is the only road to success.”  What does he mean by this?  What’s your response?

Dethier acknowledges some writers’ sentiments that ‘revision is a sign of failure, and criticism a personal affront’, and comes from a place of understanding when he says that most writers have to revise.  This implies that the minority of writers take revision and criticism at face value rather than accepting them and revising their work, which they must have seen as perfect and close to their visions.  But I believe too that revision is the only road to success if success means a satisfactory piece of writing.  Some writers seem to be stuck in an endless loop where nothing they ever create is ever good enough for them, thus not fit for others’ reading either.  However, revising and being objective about one’s own work comes ever closer to the ideal product.

2. On page 124 Deither uses the metaphor of working on a car to think about revision.  What’s a metaphor you have for revision?  What can you compare it to?

Revising drafts is like brushing teeth.  Some people like brushing their teeth, others don’t.  Some are indifferent and do it out of habit.  At the end of the day, everyone brushes their teeth because they want to maintain standard oral hygiene.  In the same way, revising may not be for everyone, and everyone has a different attitude, approach, and reason for doing it.  Revising will objectively make for a better piece of writing.

3. Respond to one of the following from Donald Murray’s “Revising Your Own Manuscripts”:

a. “Good writing is essentially rewriting.” (pg 101)

From personal experience, nothing I write ever stays the same.  Whether it’s just one sentence or a thesis or even entire paragraphs, sometimes for the sake of a good, cohesive piece of writing, I find the need to just let go of some things.  For example, we all have that one sentence we think we absolutely need to include in an essay; but no matter how we look at it, the sentence just doesn’t fit into the context at all.  You could change the sentence but then you run the risk of losing its intended impact.  Perhaps you could revise the sentence, and try to set it up better beforehand instead of shoehorning it in as is.

1) In the text “ Revising Attitudes” by Brock Dethier, the author uses the sentence “…For most of us revision is the only road to success” to highlight the fact that sometimes the initial draft for some people are full of flaws. Consequently, what revisions does is that it serves as a tool for looking back at our mistakes and giving us an opportunity to fix them. In other words, revision is the only to road to success. In my opinion, revision is the only accessible tool for a writer to make his/her work better.

2) In simple words, what Dethier is trying to imply by that metaphor is that as you work more on a car it gets better just like that if you put effort in revising a piece of writing, it will get better. I personally think of revising as playing a sport. The more you practice and improve on your techniques, the better you will get. Starting with the major weaknesses and then moving on smaller issues. By doing this, one can not only be better at what they do but also, they also know where their weaknesses lie.

3) In Donald Murray’s piece, “Revising Your Own Manuscripts”, the major focal point is to emphasize the need for revision. Just like in Brock Deither’s piece, Murray also argues that a piece of writing is never finished; it always has some margin for improvement. It is natural for someone to think that they are done with writing right after their first draft because mostly people think the effort they put into the first one is enough for publication, this group of people includes me too. In reality, this is never the case. As much as you think that you are done, first draft is just the beginning.

Given from what he has written in Revising Attitudes, Mr Dethier, by saying “for most of us reason the only road to success,” meant that in most cases people need to revise in order to get their work to an acceptable level. He uses a metaphor early in the text, that less proficient students learn that revising is the only way in which they can achieve an A. Additionally, he mentions that the few people who can get by without revising actually do so continuously, in their minds. 

Personally, I absolutely agree with him. But for the sake of the way I view things, I must highlight that revision can range from anything from grammar and spelling to a rehash of the main idea of the text. 

I personally dislike explaining complex ideas with the aid of every day metaphors or similes, for stylistic reasons. I only do it when the use of these metaphors would result in achieving a clear objective such as increasing my own understanding of the idea its describing. In this case, I hope it achieves that. But, I’ll do it because it is the task. A partial metaphor I have for revision is art. One can change it endlessly, but it will never be objectively worse or better than before. It will simply be different, unless and only unless, you’re using a sort of benchmark or standard to qualitatively measure the change such as if it is better from an ease-to-understand standpoint. 

“A piece of writing is never finished.” The previously mentioned metaphor is a good way to examine this view from. Writing, due to its inherent nature, is not something you can reach a certain point with and proclaim perfection—unless there’s a specific task associated with it, and even then only maybe. Writing is a never ending set of words that can have endless combinations and achieve endless layers of meaning. You can never finish it. But, you can get awfully close to using it for a specific something, and that is a final draft. 

1. Prior to this phrase, Brock Dethier states that “revision is a sign of failure”, ultimately arguing that some people say they have a negative feeling when they are given criticism or feedback on their work and told to do some revision. Some people want their first draft to be their last because they’ve put so much effort into simply getting the assignment done and receiving a grade, whereas they haven’t really taken the time to actually read over their work and look for ways to make their writing even better. When Brock states “For most of us revision is the only road to success”, he argues that not only professional writers, but ordinary people usually tend to spend more time on finding ways to improve their work rather than officially completing the work.
2. Revision can be compared to the process of doing any task for a certain period of time. You need to spend some time on working on your writing, but sometimes if you spend too much time, it can lead to repetitiveness and ultimately can make your writing bad.
3. “Good writing is essentially rewriting”: This statement by Donald Murray is very similar to what Dethier was arguing in his “Revising Attitudes”. Murray states that most writers tend to revise their own work many times even before realizing the fact that they are. As he states that the writers are revising every time they delete a phrase or sentence and edits a paragraph, they are essentially improving their own work as they go.

1. When Dethier says revision is the only road to success, he means that revising a piece of work is the only way to make sure it succeeds. Most writers aren’t able to write a masterpiece in one sitting. To make something interesting that accurately articulates what the writer is trying to convey takes multiple tries. Revising is the only way to correct mistakes and create a better piece of writing.
2. Revision can be compared to athletic training. You can always train to be better. You can strength train to lift more, run to become faster. There’s always a way of improving.
3. On page 103, Murray says “A piece of writing is never finished.” This applies to all forms of art, and is very true. When creating something, there is no real way of determining when it’s “done.” Anyone who’s created art can understand this. In regard to drawing and painting, there’s always something else you can put in the scene, or a detail to fix. In writing it always feels like there’s something you missed, some mistakes you can go back and fix, or something extra to add. No artwork is ever really finished, the creator just finds some point where they are comfortable with stopping.

1. On page 117 of “Revising Attitudes,” Dethier writes “…For most of us, revision is the only road to success.” What I think I think the author meant by this was that by revising we work towards a personal triumph. In the context of school, by revising our papers we increase our chances of getting a better grade than if we don’t. Not everyone is a naturally good writer and even good writers struggle to get their ideas down the way they wanted so revision allows for improvement.
2. On page 124 Dethier uses the metaphor of working on a car to think about revision. Revision to me can be compared best to surgery. You want to get rid of anything that’ll burden you now before it affects you in the long run. Although we might not see the fun in revision, and neither is surgery, but you know that it is in your best interest to go through with it.
3. On page 103 of “Revising Your Own Manuscripts,” Murray writes “A piece of writing is never finished.” I think he gets it right on the money. I forgot which author said it or if it was even in the readings but once you submit something the curse of hindsight always points out something that could’ve been improved upon.

1).On page 117 of “Revising Attitudes”, Brock Dethier responds to a caveat towards revision, which stated the revision is a sign of failure with the statement “… For most of us, revision is the only road to success”. Dethier is trying to say that not only is revision not a reference to failure, but revision is done by most (if not all) writers. If writers need to revise their papers in order to create their work, why would such an activity be seen so negative? As an important part of the process of writing to most writers, revising should be seen as a sign of success and improvement.
2). Revising a piece of writing can be like learning to prepare a new meal. Before you can really master the process of preparation and cooking, you have to do it first without much help or experience. This creates a sort of benchmark. It might not be the best it could be, and many can become discouraged at this point. But if one takes this as a foundation for improvement, they could think of ways on how to make it better, apply those changes, and create a better version of the dish next time. Not to mention, just like writing, there is usually always a way to mek a dish better, meaning the revision process never really ends.
3). In his essay “Revising Your Own Manuscripts”, Donald Murray writes, ” Good writing is essentially rewriting”. Murray pretty much sums up what Dethier was trying to say in his piece. A good piece of writing requires revision, and a good writing process requires a piece of work to undergo a few sessions of revision. Murray also goes beyond the statement to imply that this statement is almost like a rule writers should follow.

When Dethier writes “… for most of us revision is the only road to success,” he means every revision brings the piece closer to being a better and more refined piece. Dethier is trying to give rise to the notion that the revision process is not the enemy that is finding the faults of the writing piece but rather finding ways to enhance the piece. Dethier is acknowledging others’ resistance of revision and explaining the reason behind the resistances as well as the misunderstandings of the revision process. Each revision only makes the piece better because every time the piece is re-examined there is something new that can be further developed or there is a new lens that can be used to analyze the piece. The statement can also be interpreted as success is only measured by the withholder thus, the revision process ends when the writer has felt that the piece is worthy of being labeled complete or published. There is also the fact that success, for many, is always changing which correlates perfectly to the revision process.

Dethier uses the metaphor of working on a car to explain further the fact that there is always additional work that can be done to improve the functioning of the piece or the car in this instance. A metaphor that I use to describe the revision process is that revision is deciding what outfit to wear for a certain event. I thought of this metaphor because for every event you might have a certain outfit picked out that you think will perfectly suit the type of event, however, there will always be something you could change or add to make the outfit look better. Nonetheless, you stop altering the outfit when you feel content about how it looks pertaining to your style. Additionally, there are multiple parts of the outfit that can be judged or examined by others that see you at the event so you think in those perspectives as well. Using this as a comparison can stem a more positive response toward revision.

When Murray writes “Good writing is essentially rewriting” he is referring to the fact that everything takes time and effort. Thus, if one recurrently edits a piece it will in turn be better than it started off. The revision process is also rewriting the thoughts in your head by putting it on paper. In addition, revision takes multiple tries and getting good at something does also; for example when being considered as “good” for a sport or skill it takes a lot of practice and concentration.

 

1. In “Revising Attitudes” Brock Dethier writes “…For most of us, revision is the only road to success.” This potentially means that with revision, a text will only get better (if revised in the right way of course). Most people have a bad reputation with revision and see it as a sign of failure, that it isn’t good enough. However, revising doesn’t imply that the writing is bad but that it can get better and be more focused on the ideal point that the writer was trying to convey the first time.
2. A metaphor I have for revision would be doing tricks on a skateboard. In order to learn how to do tricks on a skateboard, you need to figure out what move you want to learn. This can be compared to what message a writer wants to write about. Then the skateboarder needs to first have a foundation of how to write a skateboard. This can be compared to the zero draft of a writing. Next, the skateboarder needs to try attempting the trick move. It will probably be very sloppy or messy. This can be compared to the first draft of a writing. The skateboarder will then attempt to keep trying the same trick move which is the revision of the message in the writing. Finally, the skateboarder will expertise the move just like how the writer will have a final perfect piece.
3. “A piece of writing is never finished.” This is very true because every piece of writing has room to be revised. The only reason why a writing piece is “finished” is because there is a deadline. Without the deadline, anyone can keep revising a paper to make it better than before. There is a lot of frustration that comes with “finishing” a paper because the writer never feels like the paper is finished. However, Donald’s Murray’s “Revising Your Own Manuscripts” tells us that we need to stop being overly critical of our writing because that is the only way we can successfully revise a paper without rambling off topic.