Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

It is often better to replace a piece of troubled writing than to fix or revise it.

Once again, I was talking to a person who had written a large item. The item wasn’t good. It had little focus, and most people walked away from it wondering, “what was that about?” The writer looked at me, sighed in frustration, and said, “Well, what I was trying to say was…X”

The writer had written the piece and then revised it several dozen times over several months. They fixed this part and fixed that part and fixed another part and fixed the whole thing over and again. As I wrote earlier, the writer concluded with what they were trying to say.

My reaction was, “get a new piece of paper and write X.” In other words, stop fixing and replace.

The writer struggled with a common malady of many writers. We want to revise a bit here and there, fix this, fix that, and be finished.

Revising has an important place in writing, and so does replacing.

I am an engineer. I often write about engineering topics. I work with other engineers and with their writing.  Engineers solve problems, i.e., we fix things. It is painful for an engineer to discard a problem and submit a new item. That would waste all prior effort.

We should get over it. We should replace our troubled writing instead of trying to fix it.

The blank sheet of paper is a wonderful invention. Try it.