Cutting and rearranging in revision

I submitted a longish essay last night to three long-shot publications. You can't get published if you don't submit, I tell myself, even as the expectation of rejection raises her eyebrows at me. Pshaw, I tell her. Have some more tea.

The original draft of this particular piece began with a long quote from a book I read last summer, followed by two short paragraphs, both of which carried the flavor of preambles.

So I cut them.

The essay now begins with what was the third paragraph. I moved the long quote and revised the preamble-y paragraphs to later in the piece, with the hope that by this time in the essay, a reader is invested enough not to skim or skip over a dense quote.

Playing with cutting, pasting, rearranging, and reordering is a fabulous way to explore revision, whether you're writing an essay or a poem or a chapter for your book. So often, the material we start with winds up being necessary at first -- as a way into the writing -- but ultimately extraneous.

If you're sitting on a draft and feeling stuck about next steps, try this today. Choose a new starting place. Move some parts around. See how this changes the flow and strengthens the impact of your story.

What do you discover?