Deep Revision: A Guide for Teachers, Students, and Other Writers

by Meredith Sue Willis

Book by Willis, Meredith Sue

Genres: Writing

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

A well-known speaker and writer about the teaching of writing, her own novels include A Space Apart, Higher Ground, Only Great Changes, Trespassers, and Oradell at Sea. Her short story collections are In the Mountains of America and Dwight's House and Other Stories. Her work has been praised in periodicals like The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, The San Francisco Chronicle, and many other periodicals.

She has won major awards including literary fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the arts, and her fiction has won prizes like the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award and the West Virginia Library Association Award (1980)[2], as well as the Chaffin Award for fiction.

An early writer-in-the-schools with Teachers and Writers Collaborative, she has turned many of her experiences teaching writing into three books for teachers and writers (Personal Fiction Writing, Deep Revision, and Blazing Pencils) and three novels for children (The Secret Super Powers of Marco, Marco's Monster, and Billie of Fish House Lane). She is a past Distinguished Teaching Artist of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts."

Reviews

[Elizabeth Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meredith Sue Willis has a playful but realistic understanding of revision. I appreciate her holistic approach; revision happens throughout the entire writing process and throughout our lives. She believes (as do I) that a first grader revising makes decisions very similar to an adult, and so the lessons of revision apply regardless of age. This book is chock-full of exercises for the practical-minded.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though more geared toward fiction writing, I liked many of the suggestions that Willis had to make about revision activities and think that (at least some of them) could be adapted to non-narrative non-fiction. I also liked how she used examples of writing from her students and self, allowing us to see how writers of various ages and levels of expertise use revision as a tool for enrichment, thinking, and learning. Her final chapter that talked about revising long projects was also full of good advice that could easily be used/adapted by dissertation writers. I liked, for example, her idea about writing a review of the book from the perspective of its ideal reader as a way to get a capsule glimpse into the whole project.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book starts off by introducing teaching revision strategies to young children, and slowly migrates to revision strategies for more advanced writers. The author offers several concrete strategies that could be adapted for different age groups. A solid read.

[GNOWP · Rating 5 out of 5]

I use this book both for myself and in my classroom. It has invaluable advice on revision that it is worded in ways that make sense, even to students who have that blank look when you ask them to revise. If working on revision is where you want to focus this is a really good choice.

excerpt: "After the first burst of inspiration, you usually need to add more. The purpose of adding to a piece is not merely to make it longer, nor is it merely to flesh out an idea or (perish the thought! pad it. The real reason to add is to get farther inside, to find new directions, to get a clearer understanding of your material. If all you ever do in writing is draft, correct your selling and punctuation, and make a fair copy, you are at risk of merely hovering over the surface of your material." from the chapter titled, "Going Deeper by Adding."

Laurie Williams

[Lance Greenlee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not the instant gratification we are sometimes accustomed to, but it is a curriculum-changing book of the highest quality for teachers dedicated to teaching writing as a process. Here are many ideas to help teachers get those students to revise deeply. I thought that it needed to be more direct, concise, and that it could be better organized; but it’s good stuff.

[Wendy · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some good exercises for writing revision exercises in a k-12 classroom, but nothing earth-shattering.

[Lindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Resource for teachers of writing.