Fixing the Ugly

By Kari Wold, Writing Specialist

We have all written The Ugly Paper. Yes, I’ll admit it. I was a journalism major, I’ve been teaching writing for years, and I’m working on my PhD, but I still mess up. I have acute, painful memories of clutching poorly-written papers to my chest and sobbing in bewilderment over why these papers weren’t loved in offices of uncomfortable-looking professors.

The thing is, though, sometimes papers can be train wrecks. We may or may not know the reasons behind the Ugly, either. At times, we write Ugly because we’re just busy. I get it: I’m in a full-time doctorate program with an assistantship and work as a writing specialist. Or at times, life emergencies force us to just do the best we can to cope and have to dash off some Ugly in the process. Other times, we pour our hearts into a paper and get feedback deeming it Ugly while we’re left cocking our heads in bewilderment with a vague mandate to improve.

No matter the reason, summoning the will to fix these rejected papers can be tough. But because fixing the Ugly papers in our lives is an important step in showcasing our credibility as scholars, I’ve gathered some road-tested ways that show how I and many others have gotten through this process:

1. Psych yourself up. Look, you’ll need to go into some mental trickery here. Make yourself love your topic, fix your mind on an end goal, and check your attitude to make sure it’s at least vaguely positive. Your attitude will creep into what you’re putting on the page, so it’s important you’re engaged in what you’re writing. Additionally, this fixing the Ugly process will go much more quickly if you’re at least faking excitement.

2. Remind yourself text is not precious. Yes, it’s tough to change or to even delete the text you initially wrote. But you need to change the Ugly in order to improve it, and in general, pieces drastically improve with some good revision. I promise! What helps me emotionally in this process is creating a separate MS Word document where I can paste all my “deleted” text. It makes me feel a bit better to know that I’m not really deleting it…

Another trick to get yourself removed from your own work is to make your work look like someone else’s, as it’s so much easier to edit someone else’s piece. Put your piece in a different font, a different size, or a different color. Not only is it amusing (and a great procrastination method), it will help you be more effective when tearing into the Ugly.

3. Sit. Stay! Use your time wisely. My house is never cleaner than when I need to fix a paper, and when a deadline is looming, there is no greater draw than the Internet. But we all know our high-energy mental hours, and those high-energy mental hours need to be spent in front of academic work. You’ll thank yourself later.

4. Make checklists. To be an effective editor, you need to know what you’re reading for when you go through a piece before you can hope to change the Ugly. Think about what your professors or your friendly neighborhood writing folks keep mentioning. List those in an MS Word document and group them into APA, writing, and content categories. You can then go through your work once for APA, once for writing, and once for content, looking at each checklist in tweaking the Ugly. It’s actually fun for me, but because I’m a huge nerd, you might have to psych yourself up for this.

5. Let it cool. When you’re done fixing the Ugly, it’s tempting to send off the assignment and forget it ever existed. The temptation is strong, I know! But if you have time, let the assignment cool a bit. Go off and do something completely different. Move your body around; you’ve earned a bit of a breather. Then, come back and read your work again. Read your work out loud. You’ll surprise yourself by what you find.

You may well be rolling your eyes by now as what I described above isn’t exactly a picnic of a process. But hey: The reaction is understandable because summoning the will to fix the Ugly is tough for everyone. But once we actually stop fussing, sit down, and start working, we might very well come up with something much less Ugly than before. In fact, we might come up with something quite Beautiful.