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Revisions…the inevitable process of writing

Feb 2nd, 2008

by Marsha Maung

Look a writer in the eye and ask them if they have ever succeeded in coming up with the perfect piece of writing first off without needing to revise or edit the article…and watch them cringe! Now, if you know an AUTHOR who is established and ask them how much they appreciate their proofreader and editor and watch them gush! That’s how tedious it is to write a nice piece of article or book and how repetitive the chore can become. I sometimes regard writing with a little bit of distaste.

Oh, hang on a minute. Technically, I don’t REALLY hate writing all that much. I still believe I was born to write….because I don’t remember when it was I started writing stuff….on used receipts, on toilet papers, on the table, on artblocks, on those small tiny notebooks. I think my ‘stories’ were amusing to my parents…which probably explains why they found my blocks of scribblings on the back of the refrigerator ‘forgiveable’. BUT here’s the thing, what I hate is not the ‘writing’ itself because I sit down and bang on the keyboard as words, ideas and the story unwinds inside my head and heart. I just keep banging on the keys until either one of my kids scream or when the idea-train stops chugging. That’s the easy part.

Now, the hard part. The revision part which I absolutely loathe! And yet, doing revisions and editing to a story or an article is an incredibly important part of the writing process. Undeniably so. But here’s what I am thinking….

….revision is boring and tedious simply because the creative process is over! When I’m writing a piece of article or a web content, there’s an adrenaline rush not unlike one that a marathon runner experiences. It keeps the writer writing till the very last dot. The juices flow and the fingers are tapping over the keyboard because you’re thinking and loving all the words that are flowing out of your brains. And then when you’re done with it, there’s no reason for you to go back and read the article or story. Unless it’s for enjoyment purposes…the way authors read their own books.

Going back, rewriting and fine-tuning an article help keep the story in one piece. You know how sometimes you’re writing along fine and then suddenly everything falls apart. You look around you and you don’t know where you left off and why you were writing about that in the first place? That, in a writer’s term, is called derailment. You’re derailed because you got carried away.

And it is precisely because it’s so easy to get derailed that you have to spend some time at the end of the writing process to go back and fine-tune the article! But why is it necessary to revise the article more than once? You see, in writing, it’s possible to rewrite a disaster. Yes, it’s an explosive disaster because when you’re rereading it, it sounds completely incoherent and pointless – you rewrite and revise that and then you STILL feel like throwing it away or deleting it from your hard drive.

There are two things you can do when this happens (when you hate the piece of article but would like to keep it).

One, you can hire someone to edit your article for you or review it for you. Two, take a break. I mean, get your ass off of your chair, make yourself a cup of chamomile tea, sit in front of the television, dig into a tub of ice-cream and then come back to see if you’re looking at the article from a different perspective.

Being creative in writing can get to the best of writers. No kidding. The best thing you can do for yourself is remove yourself from the situation, take a break and then relook into it. Sitting there in anxious perspiration isn’t going to do you any good.

Happy writing!

Marsha Maung is a Malaysian-based freelance writer who has been in the search engine marketing business for more than 8 years. Today, she spends her time alternating between being a mother to her kids and mother to her clients' websites and blogs! Now, she is a popular SEO blog content writer and service provider. Visit her website http://www.marshamaung.com for more info and if you want dirty personal details, visit her blog at http://www.marshamaung.blogspot.com .