The Craft of Revision

By Donald Murray,

Book cover of The Craft of Revision

Book description

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Donald M. Murray takes a lively and inspiring approach to writing and revision that does not condescend but invites students into the writer's studio.

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Craft of Revision as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This writing instruction book came to my aid as I began to teach writing at Harvard University in the late 1990s, when I was trying to help college students cultivate their own voice as writers.

The title was brilliant, surprising the reader that the subject was revision and not writing, per se. This focused on a fundamental truth, which is that good writing – whether it be fiction or non-fiction, artistic or professional – almost always goes through several revisions. Students often recoil at the idea of revisions because they threaten to burden them with more work.

What Murray…

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