Peer editing

Finished up my first draft of a paper for Objects Lit today. Always a relief. I'm putting The Mezzanine in conversation with Michael Shanks et. al.'s essay "The Perfume of Garbage: Modernity and the Archaeological." Being a little risky because the whole essay is about the three page passage about shampoo and Howie's fear of the future.

There's a brilliant little line when Howie contemplates how his "emotional history" can be purchased on the shelves of a CVS:

"For now, though, the CVS pharmacy is closer to the center of life than, say, Crate & Barrel or Pier 1, or restaurants, national parks, airpots, research triangles, the lobbies of office buildings, or banks. Those places are the novels of the period, while CVS is its diary" (116 Baker).

I love the metaphor.

But enough about The Mezzanine. I've been writing/thinking about that book for the last 48 hours.

Peer editing is a frustrating activity for me. I have only had one helpful and informative peer review experience. In my Writing for Humanities class we were set up with peer editing groups and then had editing conferences with the professor. One person especially always gave excellent critical feedback about my drafts, and the conference with our prof was incredibly helpful. But otherwise, peer review gets me no where.

"Your paper was good. I really enjoyed it."

Oh why thank you.

"This section was strong."

Yes, that was need to know information. What about, "This section was strong, but these other sections could use some work." Is it clear? What do you think about my argument?

I do enjoy looking at other people's drafts and helping them with their writing. I like giving them feedback. I just feel bad when I completely cover their drafts in marks and questions and suggestions and they return my draft with a "good."

The adjective "good" has been quickly falling out of my favor anyway.

I'm always interested by my desire to sit down at my computer and write on this blog after spending a couple days drafting. Maybe I need to compensate my writing for school with pleasure writing. Writing for oneself is a much more attractive undertaking than writing for English classes. Or perhaps I'm just taking advantage of this time to write freely. Because soon I will have to "kill all [my] darlings" in the revising process (thank you William Faulkner).