But the need to look at it both repeatedly and from varying perspectives was like taking a gossip story out to a ladies' luncheon and letting them have at it. Opinions changed, new evidence was gathered, the argument as it had existed was ripped into threads with a plethora of new opinions and points of view to think about. It became a tattered remnant of what it once was, and needed not only triage but major resuscitation. And for quite a while it has been on life-support while I frantically searched for a cure.
New research, new ideas, pondering, inventing again, rewriting, ripping, rewriting - never before has a paper received so much time, love and hate before leaving my manipulating ways behind. The process was exhilarating and terrifying, often in the same moments.
But what I discovered was that my initial discomfort with the paper, rather forced upon me by peer and teacher feedback, initiated a deep thinking process that resulted in some real changes in perspective. Right in the middle of the revision process I was angrily forced to teach in a way I thought couldn't be worse, and when I called the instructor out on making me teach that way - I learned how wrong my premises were. I grew immensely as a writer, a potential teacher, and a special needs parent because of what I learned that day and throughout the process. I learned much more than what I ended up writing about.
I revised not only my paper but my way of thinking. It was a dreadful, painful process but it was full of ah-has. And like laughter, ah-has are good medicine for what ails both writer and written product. Now both are better.
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