Recopying

My own writing experience has taught me that recopying is a valuable process. I, like Peter Kratzke, am a speedy typist, so it's really no big deal to retype a paper. I have had issues with versions of Word, and have ended up retyping things. I am always surprised how I improve the piece as I go along, not really having any intention of doing that. Another form of recopying, I think, is reading aloud. How often do we not notice poor grammar or multiple uses of the same word until we read aloud?

Any time I completely lose something I wrote, I figure it wasn't good enough anyway - it was a first draft, a pre-visioning of the final product. It can be so very empowering to get some words on a page. In some ways, it doesn't matter how good they are - it's just about getting started. I think, though, that there is a bad side. Sometimes I can never completely get away from what I have written - it hangs around and drags down my work. It resists my efforts to edit. I can change around the word order or substitute in another word that makes more sense, but ultimately I feel stuck with what I first wrote. There have been times I was glad to lose work so I could really start over.