How To Revise Your Poetry (Or Other Writing) on your own
Behind every good writer, is a good editor. I firmly believe this. However, sometimes you don’t have an editor you can call on. More than that, if you want to improve your writing, knowing how to edit and critique is part of the game!
Now, I personally think there is nothing that challenges and shapes your work like having a fellow writer look at it. However, I’ve also been the subject of some just plain bad advice and unhelpful feedback.
There is an art to giving critique that’s helpful. It usually can be summed up with “Don’t be a d*ck",” but not everyone gets that memo early enough in their writing career.
Why might you be trying to revise your poetry on your own? I get it. I’m a proud member of the introverts club. More than that, sometimes it’s easier for other people to give you good advice if your writing has already reached a certain level.
The revision strategies I’m going to talk about today can be used for almost any piece of writing. Though, given my background, I’ll reference poetry and essays the most.
The Difference Between Revising and Editing
One of the most formational things I learned early in my writing career is that there is a difference between editing and revising. (Shout out to my college comp class at good ole LHS! Sometimes what you learn in high school is important.)
Editing is the nitty gritty of shelving commas in the right place. Things that happen at the sentence level like spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
Revising is the act of “re-visioning,” “re-viewing.” It means imagining the ways the piece could change without limits to what it’s doing on the page already. Structural changes, thematic changes, massive rewrites—you name it.
No work will be complete without a little of both, but so often writers will skip to the editing. There’s so much magic that can happen when you really let yourself revise your work and look at it with new eyes.
How To Get Into the HEadpsace For Revising
Give the work some space
Taking time away from your work will let you come back to it with new ideas and energy. It’s important to let your work sit for a while before you start trying to revise. I like to let my work sit for a least a few days, but sometimes longer if I can. I always give myself at least one night’s sleep in between writing and revising.
Come to the work with fresh eyes
Don’t revise when you’re tired. I repeat, don’t revise when you’re tired. You’ll be more likely to miss little things and less willing to pursue bigger changes because you’re low energy. I love to revise in the morning before I do any other writing for the day.
Make sure you have time
I know that depending on how you work, deadlines can help or hinder your process. I also know the only way you’ll be able to take advantage of the first 2 recommendations is by building in time to let yourself do them. You need to know when you want to have the project absolutely done, so you leave yourself time to revise without missing your deadline.
10 Ways To Revise Your Poetry (And Other Writing, Too!)
Even if you don’t ultimately use the revisions you make, playing around with your writing will make you a better writer. You’ll learn to make conscious choices and be more in control of your voice.
1. Pull Out The Skeleton (Not As Creepy As It Sounds)
A lot of us are familiar with the idea of writing an outline before we write the whole piece. One of my favorite revision tricks is actually to pull an outline out after I’ve written the thing.
Poem. Essay. Weird Hybrid Thing. Go through each “section” of your piece and write what it’s saying in one sentence or less.
This is a great way to examine the overall flow of your work to make sure it’s making the sense you want it to.
2. Introduce A Form
Did you know essays have forms too? They do!
Is your poem around 14 lines? What happens if you push it into a sonnet? What happens to your essay if you make it braided. This form may or may not stick with your work through the long haul, but it can help you see your work in new ways.
3. Read it … out loud… vampire.
That silly reference probably dates me at this point. But seriously. Read your work out loud. It’s life-changing! You’ll hear where you stumble and where it sounds awkward.
This is useful even if you intend for your work to be experienced on the page!
4. Cut excess language
I heard from another writer once that you should hold a knife to every word in your piece and ask it why it’s there. If it doesn’t have a good answer, cut it.
Common words that can be cut:
And
But
That
Very
Just
Getting familiar with passive voice and how to remove will help you make your writing more concise, as well.
5. Change perspectives or tense
Are you always writing the in first person? What happens to your piece of its suddenly in second person? or third?
I read the poetry book. (First)
Vs
You read the poetry book. (Second)
Vs
David read the poetry book. (Third)
Shifting the perspective of a piece lets you see it in a different way.
You can also experiment with changing the tense of your piece:
You are amazing. (Present)
Vs
You were amazing. (Past)
Vs
You will be amazing. (Future)
This is also a good time to note: Make sure your tense is consistent throughout the piece unless, of course, you’re switching tenses purposefully.
6. Keep only your favorite lines
Sometimes when we write something there are parts we’re really attached too, and parts that we just aren’t. What happens to your poem or essay if you cut everything except the very best lines?
Maybe you keep this new distilled version, or maybe you keep writing based on what’s left!
7. Consider your audience
Every piece of work has an audience, when you’re revising it can be helpful to think of how your audience is going to experience this piece. What information do they need to understand your work? Or, what do they need to know for your work to have the impact you intend for it to have?
8. Add detail and avoid generalities
When possible, you should avoid using generalities. It can benefit your work to be more specific. One of the ways to do this is through your word choice.
Consider the word: tree. When you use this word, people can picture anytype of tree they want: aspen, oak, palm, you name it. Consider if you use the word: pine. That creates a very specific image for your audience.
On the flip side, consider the phrase: white snow. When we use the word snow, we typically think of it as white, so this phrase becomes redundant. Unless you really want to emphasize the white.
9. Line breaks
Even if you’re writing an essay, you can think about how it appears on the page. One of my favorite exercises is to delete any line breaks and make my text into one large chunk. Then I read through and break the text apart as it occurs to me.
This can help you be ore intentional with the structure of your writing on the page.
10. Read it backwards!
This tip is mostly about catching grammatical errors like spelling or words being left out. When we’re reading normally, our brain will skip over mistakes that don’t directly impact meanin.g Our brains will fill in the blank if they need to.
If you read your writing backwards, word for word, you will more likely catch those little spelling mistakes because your brain has to slow down and consider the word outside of its context.
Interested in more revision strategies or writing tips?
If you’ve found this post helpful, consider signing up for my newsletter! I send it out once a month full of other writing tips, musings, and other fun things. Plus you’ll be the first to know when I post a new blog.
You can also follow me on Instagram or Twitter.