In the article “Revision is Central to Developing Writing” by Doug Downs, the importance of revising your work is laid out. Downs compared revision to driving down a road with your head light on. When initially writing your paper, you can ‘see’ the vision, or down the road. Further explained, to complete the drive down the road, or in this case the paper, you must go back and make changes or re-read what you’ve wrote. In doing so, you will view you may view your paper differently or come across a section you didn’t think of or didn’t realize you said in the first draft. Downs also went on to explain that students tend to see revision as punishment for bad work. He encourages teacher to make revisions optional for student so that is viewed as less of a punishment and reassure the student that it is for their own benefit. Towards the end of the article, Downs states that revision are a mature writing craft. This is article written by Doug Downs in comparable to Anne Lamott’s article “Shitty First Drafts” because both articles touch on the topic of revision and how the first draft isn’t always the best. In Lamott’s article she mentions that majority of writers don’t sit down and write a perfect paper on their first try. In fact, it takes much time and effort to come up with where to begin. Downs mentions something similar in his article by stating many first drafts tend to have lots more mistakes than polished drafts that have been revised multiple times.
I learned by comparing these two articles that no one is a perfect writer, especially on the first try. I would agree that revision do seem like a lot of extra work before you do them, but they end up making a big difference in your grade or even just your work. To me, revision seem like a lot of extra work when I just get done writing a paper that I’ve spent lots of time on, but it always ends up worth it. I’ve also learned in these two articles that revising or going back and re-reading your work makes you look at what you’ve wrote differently. You tend to catch mistakes, poor sentences, etc. and you end up with a good final product in the end.
