L. Lennie Irvin
Volume 5
Chapter Description
Many freshmen enter college with a one-draft writing process where revision means tidying up errors and then submitting the final product. This chapter is about changing your thinking about revision as a foundation for changing your practice of revision. The chapter explores the false concepts about writing and revision and replaces them with new mental models of the revision process. Specifically, it details the big picture concept that writing is an inquiry process where we discover what we mean as we write it: through revision, we discover ways to get what we mean closer to what we say and what we say closer to what we mean. Writing is ultimately about thinking and developing our thinking, and one-shot drafts cut short this growth in our thinking and the development of a piece of writing. With this new mindset of writing as an inquiry process in mind, the chapter presents four practices to guide your new approach to the writing process: follow a three-draft sequence to write your papers, always get feedback, reflect between drafts to set revision goals, and save editing for last.
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Writing Spaces is published in partnership with Parlor Press and WAC Clearinghouse.