You might notice that the passes we ask you to do in Year 2 de-emphasize editing tasks like rewriting sentences, reorganizing ideas, and so on. You can do this now that you’re in edit mode again (earlier, you were strictly reading and planning). Keep in mind, though, that the Revising Author will make a final pass through all chapters during Year 3 to revise for tone and style. Prioritize your Year 2 time accordingly.

After following the steps in the previous section, you will have up to three goals for adding content that helps students attain the learning objectives for your chapters. Please proceed carefully so that you honor the work that you and your team have done to outline and draft a textbook that aims for alignment at every level.

Open Curriculum Development Project textbook chapters have a specific, aligned structure that makes editing uniquely complex. Total chapter engagement is scoped to 10,000 words, or no more than 90 minutes of total engagement (approximately 72 minutes of reading time + 18 minutes of required multimedia; you can review chapter elements in depth in Year 1, Unit 8). Be judicious with the changes you plan to make because you’ll need to keep the overall alignment of your chapter intact, update License and Attributions sections or your reference list if sources change, use key terms consistently, and so forth.

It’s a challenge to balance coverage of your chapter learning objectives with a chapter length that students can reasonably tackle. This constraint means that you will need to ruthlessly stay in scope. Any new content must have a high impact with respect to the project’s criteria for success. If you have to let go of an idea to make space, make sure that the chapter learning objectives are covered without it and you can create a smooth transition where you removed it.

Here are some examples of what you can do with great ideas that don’t make it into your chapter:

• Develop into an article or presentation
• Incorporate into course materials (lecture slide, discussion prompt, etc)
• Save for your next book!

Revising Mindset

As editor Susan Bell explains in her book The Artful Edit, “When we [revise], we see our manuscript through a split lens: through one half, we view what is really there; through the other, what could be.” The criteria for success inform your vision of what could be for the manuscript. Your Year 2 revisions will take your chapters further towards the goals outlined in your {Course #} About This Book document.

If you have been with this project from the beginning, you will be familiar with the concept of the Revising Mindset. We first introduced it in Year 1, Unit 9 when the author team received feedback on the first chapters they wrote from the Developmental Editor. Here is a brief reminder about a revising mindset:

1. Cultivate creative distance: The more you can let go of all the work you’ve done so far, the more you’ll be able to see what is actually on the page, what’s missing, and what needs to change.
2. Prepare for change: Ready yourself to use your creative energy to move forward rather than rationalize the status quo.
3. Look at the big picture: Review the outline in your {Course #} About This Book document and remind yourself how your chapters fit into the whole.

We also want to share a few words about what a revising mindset is not. Instructional Editor Stephanie Lenox points out – based on long experience – that authors can become distracted by non-revision tasks that land in one of two categories:

• Change Everything
  • You want to revise the book by adding more (developing).
  • You want to revise the book by rewriting everything (drafting).
• Change Nothing
  • You want to revise the book by fixing typos (proofreading).
  • You want to revise the book by tinkering with word choice (editing).

These two tendencies are sometimes the result of writers feeling more comfortable at one stage of writing than another. Some authors may just finally feel like they’re getting the hang of textbook writing, so they want to stay in the stage of developing and drafting, or “change everything” mode. Others feel they’ve exhausted their creative and intellectual energy and are eager to see the project finished, so they want to jump ahead to edit and proofread, or “change nothing” mode.

Do you recognize yourself here? The project support team is here to help keep you on track during Year 2. Please reach out to your Project Manager or other team members if you lose your focus – we have all been there too!

Aligning with Criteria for Success

As you fill content gaps, you will make both macro-level and micro-level changes to ensure that your book will meet the goals of this project. For more of a reminder about applying inclusive writing strategies at the macro and micro levels, please review the section in Year 1, Unit 7 about writing with specificity, precision, accountability, and humanity.

In the table below, we provide one example from each category of our criteria for success to show possibilities for both macro- and micro-level edits that fill content gaps.

Unit Self-Check Questions

Licenses and Attributions for Filling Content Gaps

Open content, original

“Filling Content Gaps” by Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Open content, shared previously

“Revising Mindset” is adapted from “The Revising Mindset” by Stephanie Lenox and Abbey Gaterud for Open Oregon Educational Resources, licensed CC BY 4.0.