Revising your work is as much a part of writing as putting the words on paper (or screen) in the first place. Just like a statue is coaxed from a block of stone by the sculptor, so research-led writing truly shines when we cut and polish our raw material too. Revisions help your reader navigate your text in the most direct, but enjoyable, way. Seen like this, editing shifts from being a grudge task and becomes a kind and thoughtful gift. But revising your own work is still tough! It's the part my clients tell me they avoid, are scared of, and resent because all they see are their beautiful labours on the cutting room floor, and feel they’re ‘losing their voice’. But your reader doesn’t need to know everything about your project, they just need to know enough to see the wonderful wisdom of what you want them to take away from your text.
But how do you know what’s enough? Thankfully we usually have word counts or page budgets that give us logistical constraints, but how to best spend those budgets? What should stay in, and what needs to come out? If you’re writing an essay or book it can be especially hard to know where to start as you have so much freedom around what you can say. But even if you’re responding to specific comments from article reviewers or a thesis advisor, it’s still up to you how you meet their demands.
So here are some questions I use in my coaching to help research-led writers actually enjoy their revisions by getting crystal clear about their work. Each of these can be levelled at a section, chapter or whole text. I hope you find some inspiration here!
1. What do you really want to say?
A fundamental but surprisingly difficult thing to express. If you're not clear on this, it’s impossible to edit well. Try reducing your key message to a short elevator pitch – that’s your argument in its most compact form. Try handwriting it to sidestep your ‘critical perfectionist’ who wants to make it sound clever by using long words and ‘academic’ expressions.
2. Are you writing about what you think you are?
This can be quite subtle. One of my clients is explaining how statistics are in her industry are a political tool, yet she’d included a page of information explaining what the statistics described. Although this sounds like it’s relevant, it’s not because it’s only related to her focus - which is not the same. Her focus is explaining why policy-makers choose those classifications - not the detail of what they contain. Keeping focus comes down to having a good solid argument structure for your chapter, essay or section in your article. Trust that quiet voice on this – deep down you probably know when something has to go, and its ok to start over.
3. Does your reader need to know this to be convinced of your argument?
If the answer is ‘not really but it’s interesting’ – then consider using a foot or end note instead or saving it for another project altogether. Digressions and tangents are undoubtedly interesting but they get in the way of the argument and your busy reader loses sight of what’s important.
4. Who are you really including this material for?
If you’ve got material that the reader doesn’t need in order to follow your argument, then it’s almost certainly serving you in some way. Is your need to show something off getting in the way of good writing? This is a biggie that can be quite emotional to confront. Passages I regularly delete from my own work are usually attempts to convince myself (rather than my reader) how much I’ve read, and therefore how clever I am and so I’m not an imposter. Likewise, digressions into current affairs or popular culture in my writing are probably more about me trying to prove how cool or on trend I am, and that’s not always appropriate. Ultimately the acid test is to ask: ‘Is my need to tell this more than my reader’s need to hear it?’
5. Why are you over-explaining?
This is related to No.4 above. I’m not a classically trained gender researcher, so when I was writing my book Minor Keys I felt the need to write lots about feminist theory in order to ‘prove’ I knew it, and therefore deserved to be writing about it. Most of it got cut in the final edits because it wasn’t necessary to the argument – I just added a couple of notes and directed my readers to where they could learn more if they were interested.
6. Does it actually make sense?
Here we’re starting to get down to structure and sentences. Read it out loud, ideally to someone else. How does it sound? Is the flow right? What do you notice? Another trick to try is to print your work out in an unfamiliar format such as columns or as a booklet, or using a different font. This helps you gain some distance when you’re editing so it feels like you’re reading someone else’s work. It’s far easier to see what needs to change in someone’s text than it is to do that for your own.
I’d love to know how these questions worked for you applied to your next set of revisions. Drop me an email on sam@curiousview.co.uk and let me know! In the meantime:
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