I'm in the middle of revising a novella, and this it looks like. I was wondering what yours look like.
Mine looks just like that only with snarky little comments and helpful advice in the margins! ;)
I can understand why there might be a certain satisfaction in doing it that way. I just erase and rewrite though.
^
That's me, too. Though I leave myself notes with the "review" tab these days.
It lets me recheck myself later, more practical than anything else.
I go back and revise often while writing my first draft. I know, I know, es verboten. In those instances, like Linda, I just delete and write in the new stuff. Also, like Thuggish, I leave lots of notes. In fact, for some strange reason, I often end up writing most of my first draft in the notes and then typing it back into the actual text field, so I usually know what the text said originally.
Once the first draft is done I like to print it out and edit the physical copy. I type those edits into a new file (not rewriting the entire thing, just pasting the text from draft one into a new file and adding/subtracting based on my physical manuscript's edits). Repeat as needed. Attached is sample page from the first draft of my previous novel that I made edits too. Pretty much every page has red ink so I just picked one.
Also, please pardon my serial killer handwriting...
I tend to do a complete rewrite (using notes a put in the margins) based on a drastically reworked seven point structure.
This is probably the most coherent bit. A lot of color coding and notes in my other areas.
You know what's strange (if you know me) is that I just about never forget different ways I've phrased things. In fact, sometimes as I'm reading my own stuff I think to rephrase it a way I have in the past and instantly remember why I changed it last time. It's like I have the same writing tendencies no matter what...
Oh and revising poetry is different from revising prose. Just something I've found from getting back into poetry after a long period of time.
With an epic (let's say 22 stanza's), your not just thinking about plot structure but also whether each syllable is used to it's omptimum effect.
