Slash and burn!

I enjoy revising.

Ooh! A shocking assertion, to be sure. Sometimes I feel "done" with a piece -- good, bad, or ugly, it's time to move on and maybe use the brighter glimpses of it for another (hopefully better) piece one day.

But usually I sense that something's amiss. Perhaps too much information, too little, not enough coherence, overclarification, etc. Perhaps fragments that don't really make sense, such as the one I just wrote. And thus I sit down, as I did this weekend, and stare at the document for a long while.

In some ways revision can be almost as daunting as writing a fresh piece. Sometimes the same despair creeps in: What am I going for here? Is this even salvageable?

On Saturday, though, some distance from the paper made it much easier to see where I could insert more research. I referred to specific overuse injuries common to gymnasts. I developed some of the other stories -- those of Kerri Strug and the experiences of my teammates. As much as we outwardly grumble about writing on the board (but, of course, inwardly love it), I've found that breaking down the readings into sections, and then analyzing those sections further, has given me a better sense of the structure to aim for in my own pieces.

I'm hoping I'll be able to pull the chess piece (my topic for the third paper) together in a satisfactory manner. I can see several stories: mental v. physical sports, the role of a women in sports, the simple challenge of playing the game. The second draft may very well end up being one huge mess. But hopefully it'll be a mess I can work through.

In the meantime, I've been focused on revising Assignment Two. I hit page 16 and realized that there's still much more to write. The paper feels better already, though: more universal, more connected. To be honest, I'll likely need another revision after this one. I'll probably have to cut down, though on what specifically, I can't tell just yet. Whenever the "research-y" paragraphs threaten to dominate the pages, I've tried to insert dialogue -- which, of course, serves to make the piece longer. But I feel that the story is starting to move somewhere else -- somewhere better.