I write reluctantly. I am perfectly capable of writing, but I don’t particularly find any joy in it. If I am required to write about a specific topic, especially one that I dislike, then I am much less likely to care about what I write. The resulting composition isn’t read over or edited so bummer if there’s a typo or an extra word somewhere. If I am given a choice as to my topic, then perhaps I will put some effort into it. I might even go so far as to make an outline. gasp However, there are these crazy moments in which I am completely possessed and actually revise what I write. I hear you- she must be crazy. While that may be true, really I care about how I come off to the reader.
These revised works tend to fall into the category of creative writing. Literatures pieces such as these require a bit of vulnerability on my part. Questions of “what will they think of me? what if they don’t like what I wrote? can I deal with their responses?” often pop up in the back of my head. Thus I do a lot of writing and deleting and writing and deleting. The worst cases of this are Facebook posts. I have a wide variety of people who will see my posts which makes writing them a bit more challenging. Often I will write out a post then completely scrap it and start fresh. I have developed the habit of running it by my mom before posting as she is a far better writer than I am.
As far as the specifics of my revising habits, I am very much an all-or-nothing type person in my writing. I either write something brilliant or complete trash. In the first case, I may have someone else read it over and tweak it a little. For the latter, the whole thing is trashed and I start over again. If I have a good idea then I may recycle it but will most definitely rework how it is presented. I usually type up my writing as it is faster and far easier to erase. Speaking of which, I should probably delete this and start again. Oh, wait. I already did.