By Meira Levinson

Photo by David Pennington on Unsplash

Whether you’re working on job documents, class papers, theses/dissertations, or other materials, writing over break can be hard. My previous post discussed tips for getting past common writing hurdles. This post offers strategies for revising, editing, and completing your work—whether with the help of others, or solo. As usual, pick tips that work for you, disregard those that don’t, and if you’re unsure, feel free to try some out on a limited-trial basis.

Writing Over Break: Revising and Editing (and How to Actually Finish)

As I mentioned in my post on time management, ideally you should schedule time for revising and editing your writing. These are important, separate steps to the writing process, ideally involving an outside reader who can give you revision and/or editing feedback. I’ll discuss why below; however, I do want to acknowledge that sometimes we simply don’t have time for extended revision and editing stages or outside readers. I’ve definitely been in the boat of finishing a conference abstract down to the wire, and needing to hastily self-edit before submission. This is not ideal. However, since it’s a reality, the strategies below include tips for last-minute, self-editing as well as tips for more planned-out, ideal scenarios.

Revising

Why revise? Simple: you want to put your best writing forward, whether that writing is a job application or dissertation chapter. The best way to do that is to give your initial draft some resting time (away from your eyes and brain) and then—ideally after feedback from an outside reader—return to it with a fresh pair of eyes and tighten it. While you may have had successful past experiences submitting writing sans revision, revising is one of the best ways to make your writing as strong as you can. Here are some tips:

1. Outside readers

My top revision advice? Get an outside reader. I cannot emphasize enough how much this helps: it is the single, biggest way to improve your draft at this stage. Why? Because your goal in writing is always, fundamentally, to communicate ideas to an audience, whoever that audience is—whether it’s your adviser, journal editors/readers, a prospective employer, or others. Getting feedback from an outside reader helps you learn how a sample audience responds to your writing. What did s/he take away from your writing? What did s/he understand? Find confusing? Often, things we think are coming through clearly in our writing don’t get through to outside readers; we’re often so immersed in our own knowledge of what we’re trying to say that we may not see places where we fail to fully explain things. For this reason, an “outside reader” doesn’t have to be a professional, or someone outside your field—it simply refers to anyone who’s not you. Do try, though, to ask someone whose general judgment you trust. This may be a friend or family member; it can also be a colleague, fellow student, or professor.

Here are some questions you might ask an outside reader:

• What did you take away from the piece? What did you come away thinking the main point was?
• Which parts felt clear?
• Which parts felt confusing or unclear? Were there any points where you felt lost?
• Which ideas/points felt strong or compelling?
• Was there anything that felt like it needed more substantiation or needed to be fleshed out more?

Also ask for feedback about any specific concerns you have about your piece. For instance, if you’re worried whether the piece is too long or short, ask. If you’re worried about whether it flows in an organized, logical-feeling way, ask.

You can also ask your reader to help you figure out what your main point is. Let’s say you’re writing an article, and you feel solid about each of the individual subsections, but aren’t sure if there’s an overall thesis tying it together. Ask your reader what s/he feels about that: did s/he feel the sections tied together? If so, how? Did s/he see an overarching or recurring theme or argument? Often, in these cases, you actually do have an underlying thesis; it can sometimes simply take a fresh set of eyes to tease it out.

2. Incorporate feedback but listen to your inner voice

The whole point of getting an outside reader is to get feedback; of course your next step is to incorporate that feedback into your new draft. But trust your own judgment as well. Remember that feedback is, at the end of the day, subjective: different readers will respond in different ways, and you can’t please everyone. If you get feedback that simply goes against your gut feeling of what’s right—listen to your gut. There are exceptions to this, of course. If this is a paper you’re writing for a class, and the feedback comes from your professor, you may want to prioritize your professor’s perspective; similarly, if this is an article for publication, you may want to prioritize the editor’s perspective. Even in these cases, though, if the feedback you receive goes strongly against your own judgment, it’s worth a longer conversation. And in lower stakes situations—e.g. peer feedback—definitely balance what your reader says with your own instincts.

Some good rules of thumb here are:

If your outside reader says that anything is confusing or unclear, listen to this. This is likely an indication that, for any audience, it’s worthwhile for you to revisit the sentence/paragraph/section in question. Ask your reader to elaborate on what felt confusing, and what they thought you were saying—this will help give you a sense of what information you need to clarify.

If your reader felt something needed more substantiation, you likely want to consider this. This is especially (and obviously) true if the reader is your adviser, but this can also play out in other scenarios. For instance, if a peer reads your cover letter and thinks you could give more concrete examples to demonstrate the skills you’re trying to highlight.

If your reader gives feedback about stylistic elements, balance this with your own judgment. After all, it’s your writing—it should be in your voice. And style is often subjective (assuming we’re not discussing hard grammar rules). Exceptions here include if you’re publishing the piece within a publication that has an explicit style guide, or if the reader is your adviser and the writing in question is your dissertation or class paper (in the latter case, it’s fair to stick to your guns, but it may make your life easier to incorporate your professor’s style preferences).

If your reader tries to change the direction of your actual content—i.e. tries to alter your basic ideas—run away, fast. This is not a helpful outside reader. If this happens with your adviser regarding your dissertation, then of course this needs to be a more complex, thoughtful conversation between the two of you. And editors may wish you to add or remove content from a piece for publication. But if someone, even an adviser or editor, is trying to change your core ideas and thesis, this should set off warning bells.

3. Take a hiatus; then return and reread

Sometimes you don’t have time for an outside reader, or the people you’d ask are unavailable. In this case, try to put yourself in the place of an outside reader new to this writing. The best way that I’ve found to do this is to put the writing aside for some time (at least a day, if you can afford that), distract yourself with unrelated stuff in the meantime, and then return to it. The more time you can take away from your writing, the fresher your eyes will be when you come back. This is a good chance to switch gears and work on other projects, get life chores done, or give yourself some much needed downtime. Or, if you’re really short on time, try taking a brief hiatus—even just an hour—but do something utterly different in that time, something that distracts your brain. For me, television or reading helped here (as versus, say, walking around the block, during which time my mind still focused on my writing). When you return to your writing, try as much as you can to put yourself in the shoes of someone completely unfamiliar to the piece, and ask yourself how it might read to such a person. You can ask yourself the same questions listed above that you would ask an outside reader. Granted, this system does not work nearly as well as asking an actual outside reader these questions—but if you’re short on time, it’s still better to do this than to not revise at all.

4. Revising may include substantial writing

Unlike editing, which usually focuses on micro, surface-level changes (such as spelling or grammar), revising can really vary in scope. In some cases it might simply entail short, fast tweaks, while in other cases it might mean making significant changes: cutting huge sections and/or adding lots of new writing. There’s usually no way to gauge this ahead of time, so err on the side of caution, and set aside time for significant revisions—if you only need to make small revisions, you’ll be ahead of schedule, and if you need to make large ones you’ll have the time to do so.

Editing

I think the value of editing is self evident. The questions I’ve received from students have centered more on how to edit. Here are some tips:

1. Outside readers

As with revision, it really helps to get a second pair of eyes when editing. Often, we’re so familiar with the piece we’ve been writing (and staring at, and rereading over and over) that we easily miss small errors. Outside readers can be a fellow student, family member, or friend—anyone whose grasp of grammar and attention to detail you trust. It helps to let them know at the outset what you’d like them to look for (e.g. spelling, grammar, citation, or other types of errors).

2. Read out loud

If you’re self-editing, this is the number one tip I always give: read your piece out loud. You will catch mistakes that your eyes would otherwise gloss over if you read silently. This is a really effective way to catch numerous errors, especially typos and awkward sentences (if a sentence feels awkward to read out loud, you can likely tighten it). It’s also a good way to catch run-on sentences: if you’re reading out loud and need to pause for breath before the end of the sentence, it’s likely a run-on. Not always. But likely. (FYI, you can fix run-on sentences by inserting strategic punctuation; if, for example, you don’t want to use a period, use a semicolon, as I did here.) Reading out loud will 100% feel silly the first time (and possibly every time) you do it, but it works.

3. Spellcheck, Grammarly, & Writefull

Reading out loud only helps if you know what to look for, though; of course we can still miss spelling and grammar errors, or awkward word choices. I’ve often heard this concern from students who are not native English speakers. There are some tools out there to help. Spellcheck and grammar checks work automatically in programs such as Word; the downside is that they can miss things, such as when your typo is a legitimate word (e.g. “fist” instead of “first”), or when you’re using a word awkwardly given its context. Writefull is a free app that helps you gauge whether you’re using a word, synonym, or phrase accurately in its context. It also offers translation help. While I haven’t personally used Grammarly, I’ve heard many students say that it’s helpful for them.

4. Purdue OWL & Grammar Girl

If you’re looking for online resources that will walk you through English grammar conventions in more depth, Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) and the Grammar Girl website are two useful resources (Grammar Girl is not affiliated with a university; I’ve simply found the articles helpful).

5. Citation help

Purdue’s OWL also offers citation guides, as does our GC library. And remember that the librarians are there to assist you; I’ve gone to them with more than one tricky citation (or “Help, Zotero isn’t doing what I need it to do”) question.

Gauging “Good Enough,” or How to Actually Finish

How do you know when you’re actually finished and ready to submit? Many of us (not me. never me.) have trouble gauging when a piece is “good enough” versus the ever-elusive “perfect.” We obsessively revisit and reread and re-edit and rework pieces beyond what’s needed—and sometimes to the point of actually harming the piece and/or our own productivity.

I’ll be honest: this is still a huge struggle for me, personally. I have no easy tricks up my sleeve to make this problem go away. What I can offer, though, are some ideas to be mindful of when the perfectionist impulse or the completion/submission anxiety hits:

1. Perfectionism is the enemy of the good

This mantra is true for a number of reasons:

Perfectionism regarding one task can prevent you from moving on to your other, just-as-important tasks (after all, our time is finite).

Perfectionism can sometimes mean overly revising writing—think over-mixing quick-bread dough. (You don’t want to do this. It toughens the bread.) I’ve seen students overthink their writing to the point where they actually make it worse (e.g. by panicking and changing content last minute). Trust that if you got outside feedback, revised, and edited, it’s ready.

Delaying submission can harm your chances sometimes: e.g. job applications that are reviewed on a rolling basis. Of course, you want to make sure any job materials you submit are carefully edited and typo-free. But once you do so, you’ll want to submit as soon as possible.

Fundamentally, however, I think the idea of “Perfectionism is the enemy of the good” is about more than pragmatic concerns: it’s about a healthy mindset. It’s easy to fall into the tunnel-vision of perfecting this one piece—but that tunnel vision often hides underlying anxieties or insecurities. “What if my piece gets rejected?” “What if my adviser hates it?” “What if I don’t get the job?” The “Good Enough” mentality is actually a more fundamental overhaul of our mindsets: it forces us to put the worst-case-scenario in a larger context. Saying something is “Good Enough” is, in essence, saying to yourself, “Okay—what if I don’t get the job? What if my adviser hates it? What if it gets rejected? Is that the end of the world? No.” In the scheme of things, whatever happens will be okay (I can’t actually promise this, but my hunch is it will)—and keeping a healthy sense of perspective will serve you better in the long run. There’s a reason we encourage low-stakes writing for our students: lowering the stakes makes writing more enjoyable, and often more productive. The same principle applies here: make your stakes “Good Enough” rather than “Perfect.”

2. Look at your to-do list of next tasks

Remember how perfectionism is the enemy of the good because it can actually keep you from getting other stuff done? One way to make this idea more concrete is to keep your entire spread of to-do tasks—including next projects beyond this piece of writing—in front of you. If you notice you’re getting fixated on editing this current piece, take even just a five-second break to scan your upcoming projects. Remind yourself of your overall goals, in the long run: is it more important to re-edit this one piece to perfection, at the cost of not getting your next work item done (or done on time)? Or is it more valuable for you, in the long run, to hit submit and actually get started on your next task? Projects don’t live in time-vacuums. Our time—and especially our time for work—is finite. Whatever extra minutes your perfectionism eats up with one project, it takes away from another.

3. Ask someone

If you’re not sure whether your piece is ready for submission, ask someone: a writing buddy, professor, career adviser, friend, or family member. Of course ask someone you trust. If s/he says it’s ready, submit it.

4. Deadlines

At the end of the day, sometimes we simply need an external deadline in order to call something “done.” This is where establishing hard deadlines with someone whom you’ll take seriously, such as an adviser, really helps. Sometimes the deadline will be external (e.g. article submission), and sometimes it’s self-established (see the first post of this series for details on that).

 

Thanks for reading—I hope this series has been helpful with your writing! If you’d like one-on-one feedback regarding job documents, make an appointment with one of our career advisers. And, during the school year, our graduate writing consultants are available to review any pieces of writing (they are not available over the summer).