Examines the way composition scholars view revision and how this might impact blocking in the revision stage (revision block).

1. Talking About Revision
by Brianne Holmes

2. How do we describe revision? What ideas about revision are
we developing and trying to pass on to students? I wanted to
know, so I read work by scholars and PhD candidates.
I’ll also consider how these views of revision might affect
blocking in the revision stage, or as I like to call it, revision
block.
Brianne Holmes, 2014

3. So tell me, what is revision?
Brianne Holmes

4. “‘[R]evision,’at least in broad terms, refers to
students’ abilities to re-think, re-write and improve
their papers on a variety of levels of content and
structure, regardless of, or at least postponing,
editing and proofreading” (4).
Kenneth M. Gillam, 2005

5. “Freshman writers must realize that composing is
often a messy, recursive process based on
rhetorical awareness, out of which clear and correct
prose evolves through revision” (1).
Wesley Davis, 1988

6. “Excessive revision is revision that fully explores
possibilities in a draft and their consequences
rather than prioritizing movement toward focus,
unity, and surface perfection” (4).
Elizabeth Kleinfeld, 2006

7. “Most composition theory concurs that revision is a key
element in the writing process, and in order to improve
writing substantially, students must learn to do more than
surface editing. In deep revision, students reconceptualize
their ideas and structures, achieving one of the primary
learning outcomes of most writing programs – high levels
of critical thinking.”
Lisa A. Costello, 2011

8. “Such Blindness, as I discover with student writers,
is the inability to ‘see’ revision as a process: the
inability to ‘re-view’ their work again, as it were
with different eyes, and to start over” (382).
Nancy Sommers, 1980

9. So, to review, students are being asked to do some or all of the
following in revision: re-see, think rhetorically, make their drafts
“evolve” into clarity, plumb the depths of their drafts’ potential,
overhaul concepts and ideas and rhetorical frameworks, rewrite,
and even start over.
But do students understand that these are the expectations? Are
students and teachers on the same page? Some say no.
Brianne Holmes

10. “When teachers assign revision tasks, they typically
hope that students will set the same goals, make
use of the same procedures, and apply the same
criteria for success. However, considerable
evidence suggests that many freshman students
define revision very differently from their teachers”
(55).
David L. Wallace and John R. Hayes, 1991

11. “Essentially, we tend to lump together as revision a
variety of processes that have little more in
common than timing – they occur after some initial
decisions, statements, efforts at text” (75).
Barbara Tomlinson, 1988

12. Okay, so maybe students are confused about what we want them to do
when we tell them to revise. This confusion could lead to indecision, panic,
procrastination, and other manifestations of writer’s block. On the other
hand, teacher and writer Nancy Welch doesn’t think students misunderstand
us – she thinks students understand we’re talking drastic revision (232-233),
the kind described by Sommers, Davis, Gillam, Kleinfeld, and Costello.
Brianne Holmes
So, why else might these students experience revision block?

13. Kenneth M. Gillam
In Writer’s Block: The Cognitive
Dimension, Mike Rose calls
writing “recursive,” and
“opportunistic” borrowing the
former term from Flower and
Hayes and the latter from
Heyes-Roths (8-11). Writing is
often non-linear. The writer may
shift between editing,
organizing, generating new
ideas, rewording, etc. Thus,
writing may not follow a clear
prewriting-writing-revision
model.
“[W]riting cannot always be produced
methodically and systematically, even
according to a writing ‘process’ taught in
temporal sequence” (5).

14. Mike Rose, 1984
If we force a
prewriting-writing-revision
process, will
this create a false rule
that leads to revision
block?
“Blocking can occur if assumptions,
strategies or certain kinds of rules, plans,
and frames hold a writer too rigidly to a
top-down or bottom-up orientation or in
some other way restrict opportunistic
play” (11).

15. One more theory:
Revision block occurs
because students fear
for their lives.

16. Roseanne Bane, 2012
Okay, not exactly. But sort of. In
her book Around the Writer’s
Block: Using Brain Science to
Solve Writer’s Resistance ,
Roseanne Bain says that when
we fear something – including
writing – a particular system in
our brain kicks in. This system is
designed to save our lives in
dangerous situations. The bad
news is this life-saving system
also inhibits creativity. It makes
us want to fight or flee, not
write.
“Fighting…can include refusing to hear
suggestions for revision…denying the
need for improvement, damning the
whole system” (29-30).

17. So, if students feel threatened by the task of revision, their bodies’
life-saving systems may be activated. This will inhibit their ability
to revise.
Why would students feel threatened? Only because we’ve run
their writing through our critical lens and asked them to re-see, to
re-invent, even to start over .
Brianne Holmes
Which might leave them feeling like this…

19. Bain, Roseanne. Around the Writer’s Block: Using Brain Science to Solve Write’s Resistance . New York:
Penguin, 2012. Print.
Costello, Lisa A. “The New Art of Revision? Research Papers, Blogs, and the First-Year Composition
Classroom.” Teaching English in the Two Year College 39.2 (Dec., 2011): 151-167. ProQuest . Web. 17 Nov.
2014.
Davis, Wesley K. “Strategies and Rhetorical Considerations in Freshman Writing.” Conference on the
Freshman Year Experience. 4-6 Dec. 1988, Columbia, SC. ERIC. Web. 17 Nov. 2014.
Gillam, Kenneth M. “Toward an Ecology of Revision: A Revision Model of Chaos and Cooperation.” Illinois
State University : UMI Microfilm, 2005. ProQuest . Web. 17 Nov. 2014.
Hayes, John R. and David L. Wallace. “Redefining Revision for Freshmen.” Research in the Teaching of English
25.1 (Feb., 1991): 54-66. National Council of Teachers of English. Web. 17 Nov. 2014.
Works Cited

20. Kleinfeld, Elizabeth. “Dissonance and Excess: Four Students’ Experiences of Revision in a Composition
Classroom.” Illinois State University: UMI Dissertation Publishing, 2006. ProQuest . Web. 17 Nov. 2014.
Rose, Mike. Writer’s Block: The Cognitive Dimensions . Carbundale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1984. Print.
Sommers, Nancy. “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.” College
Composition and Communication 31.4 (Dec., 1980): 378-388. National Council of Teachers of English. Web. 2
Nov. 2009.
Tomlinson, Barbara. “Tuning Tying, and Training Texts: Metaphors for Revision.” Written Communication 5.1
(Jan., 1988): 58-81. SAGE Journals. Web. 14 Nov. 2014.
Welch, Nancy. “Toward an Excess-ive Theory of Revision.” Teaching Composition: Background Readings, Eds. T.
R. Johnson & Shirley Morahan. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2002.
Works Cited cont.