Growth Mindset

First, watch the following video which will introduce the idea of growth mindset. Then, complete the short reading below the video.

So what does this have to do with revision and writing? 

Many students get caught up in the idea of the perfect first draft: the idea they are going to sit down at their computer, and the first thing they write will be the final product. Then, if it's not perfect or "good," the student will often feel that means they are a bad writer. But this just isn't how writing works. 

Even professional writers go through multiple drafts, sometimes many many drafts! 

When I worked as a technical writer in the automotive industry, we would write up the instructions, then we would send it to an internal crosscheck (which was basically a peer review from a teammate). Then we would revise based on that feedback. The crosschecker would mark up things that were missed, points that were confusing, and so on. Then after revising the instructions, we'd send it to our editor. Her job was to pick out all the little details: spelling errors, typos, etc. And, yes, even with a Master's in English Lit, I still had plenty of them! She'd also point out anything that was confusing or unclear. 

After we got the copy back from edit, we'd revise again. Then we'd send it to the client who would send it out to the engineers. They would then mark it up again. 

We'd take that copy, revise it, send it back to a second cross-check, revise it again, and then back to a second edit. Then, it would go to the client for final proof. In case you weren't keeping count, that was five revisions. We would do that for every single document and book that came through our team. And you know what? Sometimes we'd still catch typos when we'd look at the final product. 

I misspelled "brake" as "break" on the second page of one of the reference guides once, right in on the call-out image. In other words, in a very obvious spot. One of my co-workers had something that looked like a random keyboard smash in the middle of a page slip through on one of his reference guides. And of course, for both of those, we saw them immediately once we got the hard copy of the book and it was too late to fix it. Those misspellings and errors were missed through crosscheck and edit, were printed, and were shipped out with the vehicles to about 20,000 customers each. 

The point is that most of the writing you see in the world (websites, books, owner's manuals) go through many revisions and edits. And those are from professional writers with degrees in English. So, why would anyone assume that they could write a perfect draft on the first go?

If you need more convincing, take a look at some quotes from famous authors about their drafts 

So, know that it's okay if your first draft isn't great--that's what revision is for. Writing is a process. You need to work at it and expect that you will have multiple revisions to have a finished draft. 

And if you want to be a good writer, it takes time, practice and continuing to learn.