In the reading, “Revising Attitudes”, Brock Dethier writes, “For most of us revision is the only road to success.” When he says this, I believe he meant that we as a people need to keep improvising to be successful. Like writing that is due, if we do not make any revisions, we essentially leave out any room for improvement and risks our success. I agree with Dethier’s words because if we only do what we are comfortable with, we can never be better at what we do. We would still be limited to using methods or strategies that we know, but there could be better ways to do something that we just can’t find out unless we focus on revision.
Dethier connects revision to repairing a car in his reading. Another metaphor that I have for revision is building a PC. This is because when we are building a PC, we need all the parts, carefully place them in the correct place, and to make sure it works entirely. If something doesn’t work, the PC won’t run and is entirely a failure until it starts to boot up. With careful lookout on the requirements on the PC, we can figure that we may have plugged a cord into the wrong place, or we may be missing a crucial component for a computer to run. Once we can confirm that the PC can run, we can also do wire management and organize the wires so that they are neatly placed, and doesn’t interfere with the performance of the PC. Just like building a PC, revising use similar steps.
Donald Murray writes, “Good writing is essentially rewriting”. I agree with what Murray says because when I finish a piece of writing, I have a voice in my head that keeps telling me, “You can do better than this”, but I would be mentally fatigued from working on the paper. When I turned in my paper and received a B on a paper, I wouldn’t question why I didn’t get an A because I knew if I had the time to rewrite my paper, I could’ve covered the points of the writing with more precision. I believe that there is never enough revisions on a paper, but it is mental fatigue that keeps us from doing that.