Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Life Without Revision (Well Kind Of)

Things I love to do, Reading information, forming opinions, and writing those opinions in a convincing way. Things I don't like, Revising and editing. So here is my problem, revision and editing are an English majors life. I spend so much time hashing out what I have thought about that by the time i'm ready to turn something in I almost don't like my ideas anymore. What would life be like without those nuisances in my life? Writing a blog! Once you post something you have to be very careful about changing the content. Others may have posted a comment or bookmarked a post that may not make sense if you change what was written. You know what I have found? It is really difficult to reject that impulse to revise and edit. Dr. Burton, my professor, left a comment on my first post that gave me some ideas on what I could do better. Naturally I took advantage and fixed it. Only after talking to him did I realize the danger of changing your posts. So now everyone gets to see my progress step by step, and post by post.
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3 comments:

  1. Gideon BurtonMay 4, 2011 at 11:47 AM

    I'm glad you have this concept down. The way to think of it is that subsequent posts ARE the revisions of prior posts. Now, within reason, I think you can make tiny edits to a prior post (as you may wish to do with this one -- see the sentence that begins "I you know what I have found?"), but as you rightly stated, people might have commented or linked to your post and if you change it, it messes things up. You are documenting your learning and thinking, and that requires respecting the process enough not to tinker with it too much.

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  2. Matt HarrisonMay 4, 2011 at 2:27 PM

    I completely agree! As an English Major I love reading and analyzing. Unfortunately revising and critiques are hard for me. Thanks for your post it's glad to know that I am not the only one in the English Major that feels that way.

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  3. Bri... only sheMay 4, 2011 at 2:45 PM

    A very interesting thing about the blog format, it's informal and develops over time. I like that I can get feedback from others as well. :)

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