An Essay About My Revision Metaphor

In the article “The Maker’s Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts” by Donald M. Murray, it talks about how writers and authors see and revise their own work. After reading this I saw how time and discipline play a big role in this task. Murray quotes famous writers, one being Ray Bradbury, the author of the novel Fahrenheit 451. Murray explains his technique on how he revised his work, along with many other ways that authors edit their writing.

In his article "Coming to Terms", Joseph Harris takes the opportunity to share his knowledge with his readers and discuss things to keep in mind when drafting, revising, and editing assignments. In this specific chapter, Harris explains the revision process and suggest possible preliminary steps to take when formulating an essay. He emphasizes revision as a knowledge practice, in which there is a consistent set of questions you can ask yourself at any point while working on a draft (page 99). In addition, Harris refers the term "writer's project" throughout the section.

Before learning about Metanoia, I always viewed the revision process as a way of cleaning up the mess you made in the rough draft. However, after completing this assignment and having a clear understanding on how Metanoic revision works, it’s clear that Metanoia has a deeper meaning. To begin with, when I decided to revisit this piece, I was really embarrass to show anyone else. I was excited at first, because I felt I had such a close relationship with the topic, but this excitement was overtaken with regret soon after. When I re-read the paper, I couldn’t believe I turned this in and got a good grade on it. I felt like the paper was so close, yet so far from making my point to the readers. With that in mind, I knew revising this paper through

He also states that it is important to track the revision changes made throughout the evolution of the draft. The act of tracking can show how much you have changed due to revision and can give you a clearer view of how the thought process changed (445-447, 457). Harris’s purpose through making these arguments about the lack of proper revision and giving advice on how to revise at a mature level are to help writers rewrite instead of merely editing and making small, localized changes.

One major example of this is the metaphor about brick walls.”Brick walls are there for a reason.They give us a chance to show how badly we want something.(pg 79)”Pausch symbolizes the brick walls as adversities and also as opportunities to show how badly one wants something. Pausch converses the message to his readers that life might have obstacles that one should go over but that should not halt someone from living life fully.This example of metaphor was effective at building the claim because it shows readers that one should face obstacles as possibilities and to deal with them with an open mind to sincerely live life to the

Murray (1917-2006) was a scholar, journalist, and author among many other things. Murray wrote the essay “The Maker’s Eye: Revising your own Manuscript”, which was published in a magazine called The Writer. “The Maker’s Eye” explains why it is beneficial to revise no matter if you are a beginner or experienced. “As a word is changed, cut, or added, as a construction is rearranged, all the words used before that moment and all those that follow that moment must be considered and reconsidered.” This means when you changed any word in your writing that is the time to look at previously written words, but also consider the new words you are

Within the past eight weeks, I have realized my strengths and weaknesses within the writing process. I have realized that I do not utilize the first step within the writing process of prewriting. However, for the drafting, revising, and polishing steps of the writing process, I am very familiar and use additional resources to strengthen the writing assignment. I create multiple drafts, which includes revising and polishing in each step. Therefore, I use all three of these steps in multiple drafts as I reach the final product for

Even though Haas and Flower do not mention George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, or even metaphors, in their article, I will be using metaphors to get a better understanding of what these reading strategies are like. Lakoff and Johnson’s analytical tools and ideas about metaphors (, seen in Metaphors We Live By, help me, and others,

Through this use of language, we can better understand why the revision process is like sculpting. In addition to using language like Lakoff and Johnson, we can also use their method of highlighting and hiding to better comprehend the meaning of the metaphor. What can be clearly seen in the metaphor is the idea that it is best to get all your thoughts and ides down on paper so you can then go back and have only minor things that need revising. What can be hidden in this type of revision process is that there are countless possibilities to making tiny changes, resulting in the writing never fully being satisfied. It could go on and on and on because there’s always ways to improve your writing and change the meaning, which is why displeasure can be hidden.

Revising a paper literally means to “renew again”, to look for something fresh in critical perspective. Revision is an ongoing process of rethinking the paper: reconsidering the arguments, reviewing the evidence, refining the purpose, reorganizing the presentation, reviving the paper’s perspective. At first, I thought revision was just fixing commas, grammar and spelling, but no, fixing minor errors like grammar, spelling and punctuation are called, proofreading. Proofreading is an important step before turning in a paper, but if the ideas are predictable, the thesis is weak, and the organization of the paper is a mess, then proofreading will just act like a band aid to cover the little scars on the paper. Writing is a process of discovery, and writers don’t always produce the best stuff from the first draft they made. So revision is a chance to look at the paper once again and to analyze critically what a writer has written.

In Nancy Sommers’ article, “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers”, she addresses how to different groups, students and experienced writers, go about revising their paper. Sommers method of taking the results of her experience could have been much more effective if she would have added details about certain thing. How did the group’s final papers turn out? Where there significant difference in the final papers, and if so what were they. Did both group turn up with nicely written papers? These questions would have helped to understand the importance of revision toward the creation of the paper, then just the revision stage itself. Sommers mention of how most students repeat themselves in their writings by just

In Tomlinson’s essay, she talks about revision being metaphors. One of the metaphors that spoke to me was cutting. The last essay I wrote I put so much extra stuff into my paper. The paper was about metaphors for academic and non-academic reading, I told several stories in this essay that are very personal. I elaborated way too much and it became very unorganized. I conferenced with my professor and he agreed. He also told me I was trying to make the length requirement and that caused me to add excess in my paper. I decided to completely cut off my introduction because I was just trying to make my essay clearer but it just turned out to make it a tad confusing. I could relate to cutting because Tomlinson stated, “many writers report that rewrite involves removing excrescence in order to highlight or clarity important material… Cut assumes special meaning when Henry Millet (1963) tells us that he goes “to work with an axe,” or when Hugh Leonard tells us that he finds cutting difficult when he cannot get a wedge in because each line fits into the next” (68-69). She illustrates that cutting isn’t necessarily bad,

Metaphor’s for Revision The course of constituting a credible paper by using the writing process lies directly in what the author considers important. The writer’s ideas must relate to the reader in a particular way to encapsulate why distinct ideas must stay, and why some need to go. Barbara Tomlinson gives insight to how the revision process is essential to the success of any writer, while giving various examples that apply to what she claims as a metaphor by which every type of person can agree with. Tomlinson’s text correlates firmly with what Lakoff and Johnson state in their text pertaining to the conceptual mind and how we develop metaphors.

This process will incorporate walking away from my essay and reading it backward. I have been working on this essay for quite some time now and I am sure I could benefit from putting on a pair of "fresh eyes". Although I am excited to see the result, I am most fearful of this method. Since this assignment will be due soon, my walking away period should be brief. I chose this method because it seems that the more I revise, the less I am paying attention to the context. In the Revision Strategies video, Sean Morey said, "We skip over stuff because we understand what it is, --it's familiar to us." Lately, I have been guilty of this. I have been adding revisions without truly paying attention to the sentences I feel are on point. I now see the problem with that as the will cause my essay to not flow smoothly. These methods will make me have to read each word and re-assess the entirety of my

What I've always wanted is to be a good writer and in order to do this I know I need to learn how to grasp revision. Editing, proofreading, revising, fixing grammatical errors, and re-reading, are important in revising. Writing used to be a chore to me until I found my own style and started writing creatively while keeping my interests in mind. After writing and finding out a certain style doesn't work, it leads me to try something different. I used to think of revision as re-writing and changing text and documents, until I learned what revision truly is and the importance of this process.