Revision: students think it is just cleaning up after the party

Revision: 
Students think revision is just 
cleaning up after the party.
Revision IS the party.
                           --Billy Collins
Paris Review Billy Collins

from the interview with Billy Collins:
 "Revision can grind a good impulse to dust. Of course, the distinction between revision and writing is kind of arbitrary because when I am writing I am obviously revising. And when I revise, I’m writing, aren’t I? I love William Matthews’s idea—he says that revision is not cleaning up after the party; revision is the party! That’s the fun of it, making it right, getting the best words in the best order."

Writing a rough draft for adept writers is just a first step.
Revision is when the writing gets better.

Revision is more than proofreading, spellcheck, and editing.

Students listed some ways to improve writing through revision:

1. Start with a rough draft that gets the incidents down, tells a small story.
2. Go back and add details.
3. Add sensory details, including the five senses: touch, temperature, sound, smell, etc.
4. Add telling details, small details that say a lot.
5. Add setting and a sense of place.
6. Add a time setting, when the incident occurs.
7. Add dialogue. If it doesn't work with your piece of writing, perhaps because it's internal, you can always remove it later.
8. Internal thoughts and feelings. Again, if the story makes the feelings obvious, you can always remove this part. It's better to have the feelings become obvious to the reader through the story than to hit him or her over the head by announcing.
9. Go back and improve the sentence level writing. Vary your sentences. Combine sentences. Add some short sentences for emphasis and variety. 
10. Go back and find the precise word for a feeling or thing. Don't use the thesaurus to pump up the fancy vocabulary or the piece might be harder to read. But do pay attention to diction.
11. Add sparing use of metaphors, similes, allusion, literary devices. But don't overdo it, because the piece may be overwritten, purple prose, not accessible to the reader, or pretentious.
12. Consider with memoir this device, if it's not too clunky. "Looking back now I can see that..." If memoir is told with the vocabulary and insight and sentences of a child, this adult perspective might lend more insight and reflection on the insight and clarify the significance for the reader and for the writer as well. But remove this section later if it seems too jarring and out of place, if it wrenches the childish voice back and overpowers it with authority.

Exercise:

A. Spend five minutes writing details that you might add to the story. 

     -Post this writing to your blog.    

      -Afterwards, consider which details make the piece stronger and which clutter it up.

B. Write a final paragraph from a later time reflecting on the significance of the event. 

    -Post this paragraph to your blog.

     -Afterwards, consider whether this paragraph improves the piece or not.

Revise your memoir and email it as an attachment.