Working on my Ph. D. proposal and several research papers, I’ve recently come across the question of whether or not incorporating editorial feedback is a worthwhile use of time. The feedback itself is of high enough quality, but the problems uncovered through editorial feedback never feel like significant problems. Furthermore, the heuristic of editorial feedback often misses more important, structural problems within a work, that prohibit a first-time reader from grasping the relevance of that work to their interests. Instead, time for revisions might be better spent on a complete rewrite of the questionable material. I believe that aiming for a stronger narrative instead of focusing on minute details has a more significant impact on readers.

(Note that this is more of an rant/opinion piece than the other posts on this blog.)

Revising is useful when the core message was written down correctly and cohesively. It’s difficult to gauge, but if the target audience understood the significance of the writing and the novelty of the author’s contributions, then revisions are probably all that are necessary. This means that the desired communication of ideas occurred, and might occur better with some basic edits. How to gauge audience understanding is a tricky question, probably best left to surveys and direct conversation with the editor about the topic. If the editor cannot answer questions to the author’s satisfaction, then either they didn’t read it, or more likely, the author did not communicate their ideas clearly. In this event, a rewrite might be more appropriate.

Rewriting is useful when the core message was missed entirely by some trial audience / editor. If the impact or significance of a work was insufficient, then it might be worth rewriting the piece from a different angle to try to capture more readers’ imaginations. Basic revisions are seldom enough to instigate the necessary magnitude of changes to significantly change how first-time readers will perceive a work. A rewrite, however, gives the author creative freedom to reshape the lens through which a first-time reader experiences the author’s work. Stories can be made more exciting or rigorous with less effort through a rewrite than through a revision. As a bonus, rewrites will often be much faster than revising, as there are fewer details to obsess over when putting new words on a page.

Overall, the purpose of this short essay is to point out that I see many students obsess over improving a mediocre work incrementally rather than in totality. If something is mediocre, slapping a glaze of lacquer on it will not improve the underlying structure. More often, that editing time would be better spent by completely recreating part or all of the work. Don’t be shy about the delete key - it’s almost 2018.