Revision as Re-Vision

The distinction between polishing and re-seeing is the distinction between cosmetic improvement and cognitive transformation. In Murray's model, revision is the stage at which the writer discovers the meaning the raw material of the discovery draft contains. She reads what she has written and finds, with the specific shock of recognition, that the draft knows something she did not consciously intend. A metaphor chosen for rhetorical convenience turns out to carry argumentative weight. A sentence added as an afterthought turns out to be the thesis. A paragraph that felt like a digression turns out to be the center of the piece. These discoveries happen because the writer's relationship to her own text changes between drafting and revision — she steps outside the momentum of composition and reads as a reader would, with the distance that allows pattern recognition.