While Writing is Thinking, writing is also revising. Revision takes the first draft and changes it into something cohesive and clear.

Many people find getting their ideas out of their heads to be the biggest struggle in the writing process. In my experience, though, adequate planning allows for plenty of ideas to make their way to paper or screen.

When I spend enough time planning, putting my ideas on paper comes quite easily. Writing allows me to further develop the concepts discovered when planning and to better connect them with my research.

For me, revision is the hardest stage. My first draft is often too busy with far too many ideas, analogies, and concepts. Instead of clear, it’s clouded. Instead of cohesive, it’s scattered. Revision forces me to simplify and let go of many ideas that I really like.

As I revise my current manuscript, I’m seeing that revising isn’t just necessary for my first draft. Areas of my life need revised, too. No matter what I’m revising, it’s one of the most challenging experiences in my life.

Writing is always personal in some way, so it usually stirs up other areas of life needing revision. Inputs. Habits. Goals. Time. Focus. Perhaps that’s why many people avoiding writing if they can. I know that’s why I sometimes avoid it.

Still, I’m pushing through. Not pushing for a deadline, though. I’m letting the manuscript become what it needs to be as I do the same with what it’s stirring up in me. In that, as always, writing also becomes reflecting.

Writing is thinking. Writing is revising. Writing is reflecting.