Revisions - ARGH!

Time Spent: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

I worked today, so all of my AST work happened there. Normally I would revise on my home computer, but I took the graded hard copy of "Journey" to work with me and revised right on it. I kind of like that system - it allows me to see comments on my work and change things with those comments in mind.

But what a process. I can see why the comments were made (mostly, "show, don't tell," ha) and know what I need to do to improve, but it's still a long process. There are two sentence passages in the story that I was spending twenty minutes working on. After a while, that kind of thing gets tiring.

An interesting thing happened while I was working on a self-evaluation for my Capstone class. I wrote, "I think the best part of this assignment was being able to pick up a paper which I haven't read for over a year and seeing the changes I needed to make with fresh eyes. Revisions are incredibly difficult for me, and I've learned that I need time to pass before I make revisions. I need to read things I've written with eyes that aren't sick to death of the subject matter. I've been focusing on creative writing for the past three semesters, and what I've learned about revisions and peer review in that area has carried over to my other classes and helped me write better essays." That's a good thing to see myself say because I really hate doing revisions. I know when I read something I've written after a passage of time that I'm going to see the need for improvement. And it's really nice to see the changes I've made and feel good about them.

Tomorrow, typing those revisions. I hope I can read my handwriting.