The Second Most Important Thing A Writer Must Do
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Let's get the remarkable grasp of the obvious out of the way. The most important thing a writer must do is generate content.
Runing a close second, though, is one of the most overlooked or taken-for-granted functions in all of communications: Revision. Other than the Ten Commandments – all 70 simple words – hardly a document has ever been written that either needed revision or already got it.
Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence went through a round of revision, mostly with Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. Abraham Lincoln was busy revising his Gettysburg Address on the train ride from Washington, DC, only an hour or so before delivering his speech. JFK was revising his inaugural address in the limo on the way to the ceremony. Mark Twain was a stickler for revision: 'It usually takes me three weeks to write a good impromptu speech.' And if those four masters of the word needed to revise their works, so do you and I. Full stop.
Here, then, are some of the major considerations for good revising that will help your writing become more clear, informative, persuasive, interesting, and lively – whatever your purpose is.
There's an old saying among writers: 'Whatever you write is your baby. You have to learn to kill your babies.' No one is certain who first said it, but it most often gets attributed to William Faulkner.
Generally, there are five steps in the writing process: prewriting (organization of thought, amassing data or other sources), drafting, revising, editing and proofreading, publishing or presenting. Know where you are and the purpose of each. For instance, editing and revising are two different things.
The prefix – re – means again or over, and the root – vision – comes from the Latin – visus – to see. Revision means to see again.
The document. What's your purpose and focus? Who's your audience? How will you structure and organize this?
The paragraph. Paragraphs must have relevance (support the main idea), unity (among all sentences), and coherence (logical connection between preceding and following paragraphs).
The sentence. Vary sentence lengths and beginnings. Run-on sentences are almost always sloppy. Incomplete sentences are usually disjointed, unless style matters and you really know what you're doing.
The word(s) Write like you talk. Don't try to be someone else. Natural is best – and it shows. Use strong verbs, vivid adjectives, and specific nouns. Avoid unnecessary words or phrases, such as qualifiers (very, quite, somewhat), or empty phrases (as I said before, needless to say).
Your first draft is never your final. But don't go directly from writing to revising. Put it away for a while, read it out loud, have a trusted colleague look it over. It's striking how new and different your document can be.
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