Whatever it may be, on the first try, no one is expected to get it right. Whatever it may be, whether it is a chef creating tasting menus, or a Football team, or it’s the militaries, or surgeons, and even pilots. All of them go through a lot of practice. So it’s the same for every writer.
Every serious writer will attest to this, that it’s not all about the first draft but more about the revisions when writing. A football team may get lucky and win an untested play. Similarly, a high school writer may get have good ideas on the first draft of an essay, but it will rarely be students` best ideas.
However, in math problems, the students are asked to come up with the correct answer, and in programming exercises, they are asked to write code that performs a specific task. In this case, it doesn’t matter how long you will take to get to the correct answer. Whether it is 5 minutes or 5hours, it doesn’t matter. Both of them are given full credit. The most important thing is that you arrive at the correct answer or the correct code.
But in writing, it’s a different case. It is because a report entails subjective elements: the creation of ideas, interpretation, and analysis. In short, writing the first draft and pretending it is done misses the point of formal writing. Writing and revising should go hand in hand when you’re writing.
First drafts are not essays. They are often superficial. At best, they strive to be correct. However, it may include the teacher’s rulebook, such as body paragraphs, thesis statements, and body paragraphs. At the end of it all, it’s not the exact essay.
Some students may think that I’m looking down on first drafts and judging them too harshly, but they haven’t tried revising in writing; hence they have no idea of the difference between the 1st draft, 2nd draft, and the final essay.
There is a big difference between all these drafts and the final copy because you develop more meaningful and better ideas with every draft. If you tried this, you would be surprised with what you come up with.
What is revising in writing?
The term revising does not mean proofreading. Suppose you write a paper in the evening and go through it in the morning for typos won’t be editing. The same applies to a student who writes an essay then later adds one or two quotations because an idea struck him.
Revising in writing entails; writing a draft and setting it aside for a day, reading afresh, and then be willing to make significant changes. Sometimes it means trashing the first draft entirely.
Changes may include; bits of analysis, reinterpretation of quotations, insertion of key, or reorganization of paragraphs. All these changes may occur because of daydreaming when the writer is not sitting at the computer. Changes can be achieving clarity, rhetorical, or forcefulness where there was muck and hesitancy.
Unlike professional writers, students cannot revise their essays indefinitely. Many professional writers would revise forever. Every time they revise their writing, they declare their previous drafts to be garbage. This is because they come up with stronger ideas each time their draft. If editors did not impose deadlines, they would do this forever.
Ideas may pop into your head anytime. Whether you are about to fall asleep or you’re reading a newspaper, or you are drinking a cup of coffee. It doesn’t matter, but each time you have an idea, it is always better than the previous one.
Conclusion
When you are writing a piece i.e., a class essay or a college admission essay, make sure you revise it a couple of times before submitting it. Because college admissions don’t receive grades, it’s either a yes or a no, unlike class essays. Hence, writing a solid essay is no joke. It requires a lot of hard work, which entails the writing of drafts. Strong essays do not assure admissions, but then they most certainly help. If you plan to write a college essay, visit IBuyEssay blog and make sure you learn how to revise your work.
