Lesson 6: Cleaning Up the Mess
I can’t stress enough just how important the role revising and editing plays in the overall essay writing process. Whether you’re closely following an outline or just vomiting words onto a page, the process of writing is, and always will be, a loose, incomplete procedure of translating a vision in your head into words on a page or a screen.
If you’ve ever encountered text in English that’s been hastily spoken by a non-native English speaker, you can probably detect—even in some of the best English speakers—a word or phrase or incorrect preposition. This slippage mirrors every writer’s process of translating an image into words.
Translating the image of a writer’s idea in his mind into words will always be riddled with incomplete thoughts or improper syntax. Embrace that imperfection, for, unlike the spoken word, you can always go back and revisit what you said and whether that’s what you mean.
When cleaning up the mess you made, it’s important to maintain a critical distance, meaning you must be able to detach yourself a bit from what you’ve written. That way, you can evaluate your writing for its merits, unhindered by the attachments you may have to text you worked hard to write.
At this stage, critical distancing most easily occurs over time. Perhaps this is a moment to stop thinking about your med school apps for a day. Go for a hike, a long drive. Do anything that can get your mind off med school apps. At least a day of distance helps.
You can also establish a critical distance by having someone else read and evaluate your work. Often, because it’s something that can be easily evaluated, grammar is a target people look to first when editing your writing. Urge the person reading your work at this time to focus not on small stylistic and formal details (like whether your commas are in the right place, or you’re using the correct preposition for the idiomatic expression), but rather on the broader strokes of your message.
It’s helpful if the person who’s reading your narrative also has little-to-no knowledge of the anecdotes you describe in your essay. A person’s knowledge of the situation can sometimes cloud the process of evaluation.
If someone knows the smallest details about, say, your experience performing CPR on a man who had fainted in front of you when you were walking down Seventh Avenue in New York, they will probably be able to fill in any blanks that you leave in your essay.
A reader with too much familiarity of an event probably won’t realize that you forgot to mention that you were on Seventh Avenue, or that you handled calling the police and provided a SOAP note to the EMTs with effortless grace. Someone with little knowledge can more readily identify your assumptions you forgot to mention in your essay.
When cleaning up the mess, having outside feedback can be crucial to elevate your writing. However, it’s important that you don’t solicit feedback from too many people. Once you have a solid structure, many stylistic concerns are ultimately subjective. One person may not like your multiple usages of “bread and cheese and butter,” suggesting you say, “bread, cheese, and butter” while another person may appreciate how you whimsically used the conjunctions to reinforce the carefree nature of your picnic.
Ultimately, stylistic decisions are up to you, and to have too many voices questioning them can be counterproductive and frustrating.
Additionally, beware of feedback that is overly general and does not provide guidance on where to proceed.
Sometimes, people without editing experience will make broad comments like, “The ideas presented are pedestrian and vanilla,” or “There's little or nothing that provides a deep insight.”
Comments like these are only helpful if they follow with something specific. For example: “Lines 2–4 in paragraph 3 are generalities that could be made specific by more explicitly describing the circumstances around the person falling. How did he fall? What sounds did you hear? What did your body feel like when you heard the sound?”
If you don’t have any direct path going forward with the reader’s feedback, then you should probably find someone else to look over your text.
Ideally, you should never spend more than an hour or two at a time on any of the steps described. The writing process is most fruitful when ideas have time to percolate and you’re not under any duress. The whole application process can take a fair amount of time, so don’t burn yourself out unnecessarily!
When editing, keep in mind these common grammar/spelling mistakes that are particularly glaring:
· There/their/they’re
· Your/you’re
· Accept/except
· Affect/effect
· Its/it’s
· Subject-verb agreement
“One of these experiences teaches me” (Teaches agrees with one, rather than experiences)
· Comma splices
“He drove very fast, I was scared.” These two independent clauses (sentences that are complete sentences on their own) are not joined by a conjunction (and, but, however, etc.) or a semicolon. Most often, just use a period.
· Verb tense
“When I go to the store, I will have spent twenty dollars.” In general, only use one tense per sentence, as the multiple tenses make this difficult to read.
· Pronoun referents
“Joseph went to the store with John, but he didn’t have any money.” It’s unclear who “he” is in the second half of the sentence—Joseph or John.
