Don’t be a Writer…Be a Rewriter!
One of the most difficult things for me to do, upon completing a given writing assignment, is to rewrite what I’ve just written and try to make it even better. After sitting still for a long period of time, I tend to try to convince myself that it’s useless to improve upon perfection and that what I have already written will simply have to do. But William Zinsser’s assertion that “Rewriting is the essence of writing. (pg. 4)” is something that I’ve found to be very true. No matter how many times I’ve changed things that I’ve written, I am nearly always able to find yet another way to phrase things so that they’re either more clear or more accurate. Your writing has to be tirelessly reworked over and over and over again until you can’t figure out what else to do with it (or until you’re so sick of reading the same thing that you turn it in as is).
4 responses so far
I always find rewriting so difficult, largely becasue I convince myself that every word in my paper has a unique purpsoe to it. I find having a partner to help me rewrite makes it so much easier. I tend to need a little indication of what kinds of problems there are in my writing, and then I can edit it down tremendously. This spring in high school, I had written a 7-page draft for a 3-page paper. I could only cut it down to 5 pages, but after I sat down with a friend, she pointed out some errors. Before I knew it I was down to not 3 pages, but 2! And I ended up getting a 91 on that paper. A little (or in my case, a lot) of rewriting can go a long way.
Rewriting more than once has to be the most frustrating thing. After reading my own work a million times over I start to think, “everything is stupid and nothing makes sense.” There’s always another way to phrase things, as you said, and realizing there are so many possibilities that you haven’t even considered yet is kind of scary, I think.
The first thing I noticed is that you switched your point of view from first person to second person near the end of your paragraph. You might want to consider “rewriting” that. 🙂
One thing about rewriting is rereading a long sloppy draft; it’s boring and often, because it is my own work, painful to read. I tend to read one or two page at a time, revise those, and then take a break before continuing with the rest. Sometimes I just wish that writing is as painless as e-mailing or messaging a friend. But that is merely lazy thought. An average writer cannot become a good writer without getting slap left and right by clutters and learning how to punch back.
I completely agree that trying to rewrite an an assignment is one of the most frustrating things in the world. When I hand something in I don’t ever want to deal with it again so having to go through it two, three, or even four more times is almost like asking me to rewash the dishes even though I just washed them…I find that there are ways to improve my writing after revising but sometimes my frustration gets in the the way of actively searching for things to make better so that’s something I should work on. I wish we didn’t have to get sick of our writing before submitting it after all those revisions!