Revision Process

[Lizzie]

 

I have read some phenomenal poems on this forum, so if the writers will never be known outside a small circle it's more a reflection on the general high standard of writing in the public today. I don't think that Shakespeare's sonnets would be read if they were not from a cultural totem of the English speaking world. And had Emily Dickinson been a Yemeni or Kiwi poet, without the benefit of America's cultural marketing money power, where would she be today?
My point is not that everyone is an unrecognised genius, but that a number of 'great' writers from history were fairly average by today's standards.

Yes. So well said, Achebe.

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So back on track: I think revisions get fewer comments because most of what needed to be said, has been said in the response to the original, and at least in my mind, it doesn't feel egalitarian to bump up a thread which already has a lot of comments on it, and which the commenting process always does, at the expense of more recent posts with fewer ones.

This is a question I've had too, about how long to a continue a thread. If the feedback I receive is mostly punctuation/line cutting I'll probably do one revision and leave it. I feel like if I don't post a revision that people will think I didn't take their advice seriously and not post in the future. But, if the feedback involves a moderate to total rewrite (or if it involves making changes that I'm not confident about) then I feel like I really need continued critique to make sure that I'm going in the right direction.