24/7 customer support
Professional writers
No plagiarism
Privacy guarantee
Affordable prices
94% of return customers
Free title page
Free bibliography
Free formatting
Free of plagiarism
Free delivery
| Home |
| Order form |
| Contact us |
| Blog |
| Freeing the Figure from the Stone |
| If I cut and paste, or move blocks on the screen to run together all the selected, unedited material in the order of my quick argument-outline, I have before me the raw draft of my position paper, written under pressure. This raw draft will be about twice as long as the final product needs to be. Placing the blocks in sequence reveals gaps, shows where connections need to be made, and inspires good examples. I have plenty of room for cutting what isn't absolutely essential, and then polishing the roughly final draft. You needn't be rigid or timid about what to keep or what to let go. Once you know you have more than enough good material, you regain the excitement of discovery and presentation even in the revising process. Now you can be as hard-nosed and creative an editor as you like. Since QUICK WRITING PROCESS ensures all along that you select the best of the best material, you're free now to chop away digressions, repetitions, remnants of discarded thoughts, and inconsistencies in content and tone. You can read the cut raw draft aloud to gain a measure of detachment and objectivity. Try reading into a tape recorder and then listening as if you were hearing your words for the first time. Have someone else read the draft back to you; you can hear flat places, lost connections, undeveloped meanings, and inappropriate emphases. Although a reader's responses at this point can tell you a lot about how the piece of writing works, give some thought to the kind of feedback you need. Too often, people close to a writer either try to "soften the blow," holding back comments that might be really useful in revising, or attempt to protect the writer from imagined criticism by giving stifling or intimidating advice. What you need most is someone who will read over your words with a fresh eye, and simply tell you how they sound, what they mean--without either protecting or disciplining you. For this "second reading," you need feedback, not misguided therapy. As the roughly final draft becomes the final product (see Chapter 6), new writing adds transitions and examples, and reenforces overall unity in tone and content. But this project, which you planned from start to finish so you would be sure to, complete it on time, reaches an end in the polished final draft, the clearest, most honest, most powerful piece of writing you could manage under the circumstances. The last look at the writing, especially if someone else types it for you, should be a flawless proofreading, to ensure that your reader is not distracted from the power of your meaning and the clarity of your style. Many people are not good proofreaders of their own work (even if they are experts at helping others); software programs can do some of it, or you may have a colleague or teacher who will help. But no matter how proficient you are at the process of writing well under pressure, the product must be perfect. It's important to distinguish between revising and proofreading. Once you've expended your best energies on a piece of writing under pressure, a proofreader's reservations about content or style will probably hurt more than help. At the end of a project, you need someone to perform the simple, friendly act of reading through the final draft for any words left out, word processing idiosyncrasies, or chronic misspellings. By then, your timetable has expired (see Chapter 7). Turning in your paper or memo is the immediate goal. It is also an act of liberation, the one way you can integrate what you've learned about your writing skills on this project and free yourself for the next one. |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
24/7 customer support
Written from scratch papers only
Any citation style
Fully referenced
Never resold papers
275 words per page Courier New font