Revising Moves: Writing Stories of (Re)Making

Revision sometimes seems more metaphor than real, having been variously described as a stage, an act of goal setting, a method of correction, a process of discovery, a form of resistance. Revising Moves makes a significant contribution to writing theory by collecting stories of revision that honor revision’s vitality and immerse readers in rooms, life circumstances, and scenes where revision comes to life.

In these narrative-driven essays written by a wide range of writing professionals, Revising Moves describes revision as a messy, generative, and often collaborative act. These meditations reveal how revision is both a micro practice tracked by textual change and a macro phenomenon rooted in family life, institutional culture, identity commitments, and political and social upheaval. Contributors depict revision as a holistic undertaking and a radically contextualized, distributed practice that showcases its relationality to everything else. Authors share their revision processes when creating scholarly works, institutional and self-promoting documents, and creative projects. Through narrative the volume opens a window to what is often unseen in a finished text: months or years of work, life events that disrupt or alter writing plans, multiple draft changes, questions about writerly identity and positionality, layers of (sometimes contradictory) feedback, and much more.

Christina M. LaVecchia is assistant professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. Her work appears in College English, Composition Forum, and Composition Studies, among other venues in both rhetoric and composition as well as healthcare.

Allison D. Carr is associate professor of rhetoric and director of writing across the curriculum at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Her scholarship can be found in Composition Forum, Pedagogy, and elsewhere, and she is coeditor of Failure Pedagogies: Learning and Unlearning What It Means to Fail.

Laura R. Micciche is professor of English and director of the rhetoric and composition graduate program at the University of Cincinnati. She is author of Acknowledging Writing Partners and Doing Emotion: Rhetoric, Writing, Teaching, coeditor of Failure Pedagogies: Learning and Unlearning What It Means to Fail and A Way to Move: Rhetorics of Emotion and Composition, and coeditor of the WPA Book Series for Parlor Press.

Hannah J. Rule is associate professor of English in composition and rhetoric at the University of South Carolina. She is the author of Situating Writing Processes and coeditor, with Cydney Alexis, of The Material Culture of Writing. Her scholarship also appears in College Composition and Communication, Composition Studies, and Composition Forum.

Jayne E. O. Stone is a doctoral candidate in rhetoric and composition at the University of Cincinnati, where she teaches undergraduate composition and writing courses. Her work appears in Writers: Craft and Context and is forthcoming in Composition Forum.