Rewriting with mywritingcenter.org

Rewriting
At the heavier end of content or structural editing; sometimes also referred to as development/al editing.

The web is full of text “rewritten” by humans and/or software, often lacking in quality or originality. But in publishing terms, rewriting means:

Realizing the strategic intent of the text

Making it appropriate and accessible to different target audiences

Repurposing it for different channels or formats (with permissions)

Taking preparatory work up to publishable quality

Achieving consistency of tone and texture.

Rewriting adds reader appeal and hence commercial potential to your work. Converting a PhD dissertation or collating presentations at conferences are obvious examples – albeit the main economic payoff is usually professional visibility and progression. (Publishers themselves take on academic rewriting/development editing only occasionally, where they identify unusually high sales potential.)

In practice, writing is always a synthesis. Think of writing a bid, for example. You have models you wish to follow or change, sources you want to draw on and details you want to foreground: a more or less defined plan and vision. Rewriting involves parallel processes of adding, cutting, sequencing, (re)phrasing – and keeping in touch with this, your original vision.