Elbow and helpful revising / feedback hints

To be completely honest, I struggle with Elbow. It rarely happens to me with a book. I was always suspicious about writing manuals. Consciously, I can see two possible reasons: a personal and a principal.

On the personal level, since the days of my high school, where I had a wonderful literature teacher, Elvira Nikolaevna Gorukhina, I learned to see writing as a bit of a mystery. One can analyze a sunset in astronomical terms; another - in terms of awe and inspiration. The latter probably would perceive the former as a sort of mild sacrilege. I see writing as the second option, while the mere notion of the manual belongs to the first.

The principal reason is that writing manuals, and Elbow's is no exception, are desperately trying to separate the content of writing from its form. I don't believe it's possible. Just like in sculpture or painting or music.

With that said, there certainly are few interesting things in Elbow's thoughts on revising and feedback:

- The idea of trying different tones during revising, e.g., chatty, authoritative, ironic, is nice. I think that many times it would highlight the deficiencies, specifically the arrogance of tone or lack of details.

- Reading your drafts with the eyes of a reader, not a writer. Obvious, yet not very easy to do - so here Elbow's advice to "put it aside for a while and then to read it over" (p134) is useful. I tried it a couple of times, specifically with my autobiography, and it worked.

- Ruthlessly throwing away "all the words that [are] parts of the abandoned strands" (p135). I find it so hard to do! Yet the necessity is there. Writing on a computer makes it easier. Sometimes I cut these cute yet unnecessary pieces and paste in another document, not to discard them too soon :)

- The energetic syntax. Elbow seems to give some useful advise here, e.g., clenching jaws :) Seriously, though, the use of verbs makes sense.

- Criterion-based and reader-based feedback. The analysis of the differences and the complementary benefits of these two methods is interesting.