There’s so much to say about revising. Even though I’ve just published a book on revising – shameless plug – I still have things I want to say about it.

The key message in the book is that revising effectively requires you to need to read through your text with purpose, have something in mind. A focus. Rather than just pick up the text and read, waiting to see what jumps out at you, it’s very helpful to approach your draft with a question in mind. In fact, I suggest that it can be pretty useful to read your text through several times, looking for different things each time. Looking for one thing at a time means you caconcentrate on that thing alone and not get distracted by other issues. 

One of the very first things to look for – and you’ll see I have written a little chapter about…