Andrew Norriss
Andrew Norriss: Conclusion
So there they are. The seven things I do when I’m revising a piece of writing. It’s a very different process from the heady shambles of composing the first draft when your imagination has free rein and anything can happen. It uses a different part of the brain, I think, but is in its own way every bit as much fun.
For me there is something deeply satisfying in reading through a piece that has been through eight drafts, and noticing how different it is from the first. Seeing how the story now builds sequentially to its climax, how the plot grows in a logical step by step development, how the jokes are delivered at the end of the line… just so!
And as I read through this piece for the umpteenth time, I note that in an ideal world I would probably cut out a sentence or two from section 3, that I’ve used the word ‘story’ twice in one line in section 2, and that the phrase ‘above average literate’ in section 7 is grammatically dubious…
But that leads me to the last rule of making revisions. You can nit-pick endlessly but the fact is that, once you’ve said what you wanted to say with a reasonable clarity and cogency…
It’s time to stop.
Andrew Norriss
