How was the revision process?
From the beginning, I realized that this revision would be challenging. As someone who does take pride in their writing, in the first place I spend a lot of time trying to “perfect” my essays to the best of my ability. So it’s difficult to toss all of my hard work out for the sake of shortening it, or reworking it into a blog post. But it was also difficult to actually reword my essay because the way I write tends to be like piecing together a puzzle, every sentence and word choice is intentional so that I can create the best flow.
Perhaps the greatest challenge though was dealing with my own writer’s block and seeing it reflected in the actual essay. Hindsight is 20/20 after all. Upon revising my essay a week out from writing it, I could see where my flow messed up or where I could’ve done something better. I often found myself cringing upon seeing my so-called mistakes. So it was cathartic in a way then, to revise and simplify.
I say this, however it was still sometimes problematic to rephrase something I had previously written, and deciding on just what examples that I wanted to use. Cutting down was more like reshaping than anything, though I am happy with the way that this process forced me to be more direct and clear, without all the more complicated analysis that sometimes gets in the way of what I would like to say.
Lights, Camera, Pictures!
I am not going to lie, finding images that I wanted to use that I felt effectively conveyed what I wanted to say was extremely hard. I already had some preconceived ideas about what my essay would look like if it was an “image”, so finding a picture that fit that image was difficult.
It was even a little harder to compromise with the images I did find.
Ultimately though, it was fun to use the images. It was a nice stylistic touch to use color that the pictures provided, and it was also a nice break up between text. I’m big on stylized writing, so it was enjoyable to find aesthetic satisfaction.
Overall?
Overall, this was just like writing another blog post to me, though more difficult than most because I had to translate my own writing. It was something along the lines of taking a report and changing it into a story that I would text my friends.
Much more professional in tone of course.
I’ve blogged before, and I’ve figured out my own voice, somewhere between my actual way of speaking and the level of professionalism that I use in essays. Thus, establishing the voice of this blog isn’t something especially difficult to me.
(Source: Pixabay)
Instead it was playing translator that proved to be challenging. However, as I continue with this blog, I assume that I’ll find a rhythm that will allow me to take my academic work and transform it into something that a wider audience can read.