{"id":828,"date":"2013-07-03T14:19:23","date_gmt":"2013-07-03T02:19:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=828"},"modified":"2013-07-03T14:19:23","modified_gmt":"2013-07-03T02:19:23","slug":"write-and-revise-and-revise-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=828","title":{"rendered":"Write and revise. And revise again."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Nabokov2\"<\/a>My love of written English really kicked in when I was eleven.<\/p>\n

My English teacher that year was a diminutive woman whose own passion was for copperplate handwriting.\u00a0 My recollection is that she didn\u2019t much care for how you shaped a sentence or a story; but if you wanted a good mark, you had better shape each of your handwritten letters perfectly.<\/p>\n

The rounded shapes \u2013 a, o, e, etc \u2013 had to be perfectly oval. \u00a0Ascenders and descenders had to be perfectly straight.\u00a0 And just the right degree of flourish was required when rendering capitals.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, my own handwriting was idiosyncratic to say the least.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t difficult to read.\u00a0 In fact it was very easy to read.\u00a0 But it bore little resemblance to Mrs A\u2019s idea of \u2018proper\u2019 handwriting.\u00a0 As a consequence, my work seldom made it onto the pride-of-place board on which was displayed \u2018Work we are proud of\u2019.<\/p>\n

The other thing that militated against the elevation of my compositions was the fact that that was the year I discovered revising.\u00a0 That was the year I discovered the joy of tweaking and polishing and tweaking again.\u00a0 I seemed that there was never a sentence that couldn\u2019t be improved with a little pruning, a little rearranging.\u00a0 But Mrs A did not like to see words or phrases struck out.\u00a0 Neither did she like to see words or phrases replaced, at the last minute, by other words or phrases.\u00a0 Far too messy.<\/p>\n

I was reminded of Mrs A recently when I was re-reading Writing That Works<\/i> by Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson.<\/p>\n

While it was written before the advent of the Internet \u2013 almost before the advent of PCs \u2013 Writing That Works (How to write memos, letters, reports, plans and other papers that say what you mean \u2013 and get things done)<\/i> is as relevant today as it was when it first came out.\u00a0 It\u2019s a small book \u2013 just over 100 pages \u2013 but it\u2019s crammed with practical tips on \u2018how to write with clarity, precision, brevity, and the force of logic\u2019.<\/p>\n

One of the top tips is edit everything you write<\/i>.\u00a0 Good writers, the authors suggest, consider revising an essential part of writing.\u00a0 \u2018The better the writer, the less satisfied he [or, presumably, she] is likely to be with his first draft, or even his second.\u2019\u00a0 So write and revise, and then revise again.<\/p>\n

Roman and Raphaelson suggest that, wherever possible, drafts should be left overnight and then revisited the following day.\u00a0 \u2018Imperfections that were invisible the day before will now pop out at you.\u00a0 Through some alchemy of time, you\u2019ll know what to do about them.\u2019<\/p>\n

In the email age, it has become common practice to dash off a hundred or even a thousand words and then immediately press SEND.\u00a0 The regularity of the machine rendered letters of today\u2019s emails would have delighted Mrs A. \u00a0But it seems to me that, nine times out of ten, clarity, precision, and brevity are conspicuous by their absence.<\/p>\n

In the interests of better communication, it\u2019s still best to write and revise.\u00a0 And then revise again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My love of written English really kicked in when I was eleven. My English teacher that year was a diminutive woman whose own passion was for copperplate handwriting.\u00a0 My recollection is that she didn\u2019t much care for how you shaped … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5,6,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":829,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions\/829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}