Last time I talked about meeting with a friend who could take criticism well, and suggesting (in question form) that the first 21 pages they’d written were unnecessary. Just imagine if someone did that to you! “Well, Billy, I know I asked for a 10 page paper, and you handed me twelve pages, but you just don’t need the first 8 pages, they’re unnecessary.” But I poured my heart and soul into those pages, you shout! Be that as it may, you should at least make an effort to see if the criticism might be valid (not all criticism is, but you should at least consider it briefly). What do you do when you find out that a lot of what you wrote isn’t good enough or — gasp! — even relevant to the point you’re trying to make. Don’t panic; do the shuffle!
What is the shuffle? Well, that’s what I call re-imagining the good bits of your paper. You refocus: what are you trying to say, how are you going to say it, line it all up again and ask yourself “what’s missing?” After you identify the fluff and the unnecessary bits you can really get down to what your paper should be and what it needs to be completed. Move parts around. When I wrote the first chapter of my master’s thesis I was shocked to find that my thesis statement (you know, that thing that appears near the very beginning of the document) showed up on page twenty-five! Dear me. What a mistake. A lot of those first twenty-five pages, subsequently, were cut (but I needed to write them to find my concise thesis statement based on the new research I’d done). The thesis itself (and, indeed, much of the rest of the chapter) needed to be shuffled, moved nearer the beginning or nearer the end. Once I’d shuffled everything I gave it another read: lo and behold! I knew what was missing now. I saw the gaps I needed to fill with language. Perhaps a minor transition here, but it could be a major section over there. With that information in hand I set out to finish a better draft. I just had to learn to part with my hard work first and, of course, shuffle.