4.4 When Should You Stop Revising?

Improve your writing, but don’t strive for perfection.

I perform the revising process I described in Section 4.3 iteratively, because I conduct repeated editing passes on every manuscript I write. Every time I revise, my manuscript improves. But I never believe I can turn my writing into a perfect paper. At what point should I stop revising and finally send my manuscript out for review?

In academic writing’s ‘publish or perish’ crucible, you need a plan to determine when to stop revising. Every editing pass will make your paper better, improving the odds a journal’s editor will accept your paper for publication. But you also feel pressure to publish lots, and to publish quickly (Silvia, 2007). How do you find the ‘sweet spot’ where you revise enough to write excellent papers, but don’t spend too much time editing?

Some successful writers perform a fixed number of editing passes. Stephen King has an advanced plan for revising: “Now let’s talk about revising the work – how much and how many drafts? For me the answer has always been two drafts and a polish” (King, 2000, pp. 208-209). For his short stories, Ray Bradbury wrote his first draft on Monday, his second on Tuesday, his third on Wednesday, his fourth on Thursday, and his fifth on Friday. On Saturday he wrote his sixth draft – and sent the manuscript out (Bradbury, 1990). You can quite plausibly plan how many revisions you will perform.

Alternatively, you might perform enough editing passes to make problems difficult to find. Realizing reviewers will request changes I cannot predict and recognizing my manuscripts will never achieve perfection, I feel content to submit my manuscript when I can’t find any problems without expending enormous effort. For example, years ago I collaborated a great deal with Richard Wright. Richard and I had different views about comma usage. When we polished a manuscript to the point we only disagreed about commas, we knew we could submit the manuscript.

My own approach for working on a longer manuscript also ends editing when I feel happy about my writing. I perform multiple editing passes, but don’t have a set number in mind before editing begins. I focus on different concerns with each editing pass. I begin by dealing with bigger issues; I focus on more particular problems during later editing passes.

Before any serious editing begins, I finish a complete draft of any manuscript (e.g., article or book). I delay editing until I have a complete draft to separate generating ideas from evaluating how I express the ideas (Elbow, 1981).

Creating a complete first draft also informs me about issues to deal with once editing (finally) begins. For instance, while writing the current book I felt unhappy about my use of voice when I drafted my first four chapters. I only found a voice I liked when I drafted the fifth chapter. I knew my early editing passes would need to focus on voice to unify voice across my first draft.

For the current book, I conducted a very broad first editing pass. My first editing pass had the primary goal of rewriting anything which didn’t make sense during my reading. My first editing pass had the secondary goal of shortening sentences when I saw obvious fixes. Fixing bigger problems in a first editing pass makes smaller problems easier to find in my later editing passes.

My second editing pass focused on voice, which needed attention as I mentioned above. I searched for words like ‘one’, ‘us’, or ‘we’ to find sentences where I could more effectively use ‘I’ or ‘you’. I also looked for opportunities to convert ‘the’ into the possessive ‘my’. My second pass was still broad – voice was a big issue – but because voice was the only issue it examined, Pass 2 was more focused than Pass 1.

My third editing pass resembled Pass 1 but reversed priorities. Shortening sentences whenever possible became my primary goal. Fixing writing which did not make sense became my secondary goal. I made correcting nonsense a secondary goal in Pass 3 because I expected I had already removed nonsense during Pass 1! However, I still looked for nonsense in case I added some when changing voice during Pass 2.

My first three editing passes demanded me to concentrate. My fourth pass improved manuscript quality but required less effort than earlier passes. Pass 4 focused on dealing with word processor flags (e.g., spelling), fixing citations, checking figure and table numbers and captions. I needed to do such editing at some point. I chose to do my easier editing in Pass 4 to give me a break from the demands of the earlier editing passes.

My fifth editing pass returned to harder work, shortening more sentences. I did so by searching for words which signal when I use too many words: ‘of’ and ‘that’. I can usually remove these two words provided I fix (and shorten) the sentences from which I delete them.

I used software to scaffold my sixth editing pass. Helen Sword provides a free app to accompany her book The writer’s diet (Sword, 2016). The app runs within my word processor and reveals problems which Sword discusses in her book. Her app finds many problems which I missed during my earlier editing. I used her app in stages – dealing with ‘be-verbs’ first, then with ‘it, this, that, there’, then with ‘zombie nouns’, then with ‘ad-words’ (adverbs) and ended by dealing with ‘prepositions’. I worked through Sword’s categories in particular order because earlier passes required more revising on my part. Later passes required less writing – I often would simply delete an offending word. When I reached dealing with prepositions, I kept more than Sword would recommend – because I spent so much time talking about moving ideas ‘from’ one world ‘into’ another. I felt many of my prepositions worked because of their concrete nature.

During my seventh, and final, editing pass I found and fixed minor technical problems – spelling, punctuation, citations, and formatting. I think my final editing dots the i’s and crosses the t’s. Such editing requires attention to detail; I waited a week after Pass 6, and kept away from the manuscript, before I performed Pass 7. I also experimented with having my computer read my manuscript out loud to me so I could discover problems I missed earlier.

When I finished Pass 7, I felt happy about my manuscript. I knew some minor problems must still exist but did not feel compelled to hunt them down. After all, I expected reviewers to ask me to revise my manuscript later; hopefully I would find and fix some remaining issues while dealing with reviewer comments (Section 4.5). Being happy about my manuscript meant the time had come to write a cover letter and ship the product.