Revising and Editing

Transcript

James Christensen: Typically, the editing, the revising, the fixing takes twice as long as writing it down originally. The raw material can get flowing really fast and good but its terrible writing, and so I have to take a lot of time to organize it and shift it and move it around. But I don’t mind that. I mean my worst fear is the first part, is just having that blank piece of paper there. I can do a lot of editing on the computer. I hate computers but I love word processing, and I think back on the days when I did my masters thesis and I wrote with carbon paper and typewriters and one mistake and you had to do the whole page again- oh my gosh that was horrible. This is just the technology for me is wonderful and am getting so I can move things around and I can use the computer a lot, so I don’t really make hard copies until I’m way down the road.

Shanna Butler: The revision process isn’t very long because I’ve been doing the revisions in my head generally. I’ve found that writing fiction versus non-fiction, the revision process is different, with fiction I do spend a generous time revising and then I workshop it—I take it to other people to see what they have to say because its all my head up until this point so I need other people’s opinion, so I have a writers group, I go to them, we talk about it and then I go back and I revise again and then maybe I send it to an editor and the editor gives me more revisions. With nonfiction I’ve been doing it for so long that I’m pretty practiced with it I can just write something go back through one time check the grammar and it’s done. So it might take not very long and the editors generally don’t have any comments when I send it to them.

Susan Meyer: Since the advent of the word processor, I tend to revise as I go along. I write one section and then I read it through and change it and fix it all up. By the end, I don’t usually have a lot of revision after I reach the end.

I actually read the stuff and look words up in the dictionary and stuff like that. I have always taken great pride in my writing, since, from the age of—from being a kid—its one of my things “I can write well.” I’m proud of it so I do a good job.

You can be a very good scientist and a very poor writer. Its like people that think in mathemateese, they can’t write, they understand the symbolic language of their field but they don’t know how to say it in English. I feel sorry for those people but I do think its learnable. I have students who say they can’t write, but by the end, they aren’t great but they are passable. You can learn to do this.

Fidel Montero: Once I get feedback from somebody I go through the first step of rewriting it in a way that it’s going to go out to the community, And again once before I send it out it and publish it to several thousand people I give it to somebody else to read, usually one of our English teachers.

Claudia Laycock: I have a brother in law who’s an attorney in Salt Lake who just writes, writes, writes and spills it all out and then comes back, and the law clerk that I have right now that’s more what she does, but the English major in me just can’t do that. Really I almost do a final draft as I go and then we read it, we check it, and uh I’ll fix a few things.

Susan Black: I spend hours. I go over and over each chapter separate. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times it is. Over and over and over, until in my mind it sounds like fine china— Bing, it’s perfect. Then rather than send it to a publisher, I always do two things. First one is I give it to my better in the field, so who is my better in Church History? I love using Larry Porter, and I guess everybody else does too. I give it to Larry and I say, “What’s wrong with this?” And you know, anybody who gives you back something that has a smiley face, “this is perfect!” is not worth it. The person that bleeds all over it is going to make it better. I get it back from him [Larry], and it will always put me back into the library. I write, rewrite the next thing I do is give it to an editor type person. The editor goes through and fixes “was” and “were,” “is” and whatever and they go through and they make it perfect. I read it one more time myself and then I send it to a publisher.

The longer I write, the more I have become my own editor. There is a good and a bad side to it— it slows me down. I can’t read an email without editing.

Abe Mills: I show it to my wife and she’s a pretty tough critic, so I show my work to my wife and if she, sometimes she has really good ideas—most of the time she has really good ideas—ok, all the time she has really good ideas.

When you’re editing and the product is going to be seen by the public, you better use spell check. No really, its important to use spell check, then on top of that, because sometimes when you do spell check, I don’t know if you have noticed this before, but sometimes there’s a word that you have spelled right, but its not the right word.

I think it’s important to get it in front of as many eyes as you can. And get it in front of people that you know won’t be afraid to tell you what’s wrong. And people that have no connection to what you’re doing at all, because those are the people that are going to be reading it the very important thing about this editing process is don’t let them get you off track of what you’re doing but take everything in stride and say “OK, this is great. I’m glad that these people gave me great feedback and always appreciate what they have to say” or else they won’t do it for you next time.

Geoff Germane: I may not be the most qualified, but I am the one who has the final say. I will provide the final edits as well as the revisions that precede those edits and it’s my name that signs the report.

In terms of the actual editing process, and in terms of the details—punctuation, grammar etc—I actually end up doing that. The associates that I work with have worked with me for a long enough time that they have adopted, to a large extent, my style. They have brought their own style to the process as well, though, which has improved it. There is not as much of that detail editing that is required in terms of the punctuation and grammatical types of things. Mostly it’s usage, sentence structure and that sort of thing. Flow and organization of the report—that is mostly where the revision and editing is done.

Terry Olson: Some people seem to have a natural gift for writing and their initial offering is pretty stunning and coherent. Mine is usually disjointed and tangential and so revising is the difference between any of my work seeing print or not. I cannot revise, usually, with just my own vision so to speak, although that is essential, obviously, but when I get feedback from other people is when I am able to turn something from draft status or incomplete wanderings into something that really begins to make a point.

I’ve been saved from myself more than once, that is saved from poor writing because of the willingness of other people to look at my work before I send it forward. Because of that, I’ve corrected a lot of mistakes that would otherwise have been probably pretty egregious if I had sent it in. People have been willing to work with me and I think I’ve learned from what other people have to say, enough that I am in a position where even when something is rejected, I can say, “hmm, how can I make that better”, and that is usually my goal. My goal, frankly, when I get a rejection or a “please revise this” request, I’ll say “What now? What can I do to revise this? How can I make it better?” It’s a dead end thing for me to say why me or isn’t it awful or that was wasted time. Writing is never wasted time, it is just the first step to getting to the next step where it’s worth being published and that’s to me where I, and all my colleagues, have to go.