Writing #2a--Rewriting a paper after rejection

Okay, I lied.  At the end of Writing #1, I promised to give some hints on how to write without having big blocks of time.  That's not what this post is about.  The next one will be, I promise.

Very few people have gone through their entire careers without having a paper rejected, and those people are lying about it (for the humor-deprived who might actually have not had a paper rejected: this is a joke).

In Reviewing #5, I talked about the pain of having a paper rejected.  As I pointed out there, probably the most common decision you will see will be some version of "reject--invite resubmission".

Be aware that the fact that you have been invited to resubmit (or make major revisions) is actually a positive thing.  Really.  It gives you the opportunity to take what was a great paper (to you) into a whole 'nother realm of significance.  It means the reviewers and editor saw potential in your paper.  It does not guarantee the revision will be accepted, though, so you still need to give it your all.

Once you've recovered from the shock of not having your paper accepted outright (rare) or being asked for minor revisions (slightly more common), sit down and read through the reviews.  Then read through them again.  The first reading is so you can get through the worst of it, that is, reading the negative comments.  One thing that will almost certainly happen is you will read a reviewer's comment and think "That stupid idiot, how could he possibly have misunderstood that?"  The second reading is so you can start thinking about how to fix the paper.

This is when you have to check your ego.  Of the 1,523* times I thought reviewers were idiots, once I got my ego under control, I discovered that 1,522* times they weren't idiots.  They were reading what I had written.  And I had written it badly.  My forehead is permanently marked where I've slapped it those 1,522 times (not to mention all the other times I've slapped my forehead, but we won't go there).

How you tackle the revision, once you've done the two readings, depends so much on how it needs to be revised that it's almost impossible to generalize.  But I will try.

First, look for organizational problems.  It is blindingly easy to mix methods and results, results and discussion, and introduction with discussion.  Be ruthless (see Writing #1).  Question the position of every sentence.  Use cut and paste relentlessly, even gleefully.  You might even have to break up sentences into two different sections.  The reviewers might not even understand the reason they found the paper confusing, so don't look to their comments to guide you.  You might have to read between the lines in the reviews to discover the source of their confusion.

Once you've got your organization under control, you can attend to the paragraphs.  All that wholesale sentence-shifting will leave paragraphs that aren't logically organized.  Once you've got the paragraphs worked out, then you can tackle the sentences.

All through this, be thinking about the places where you reacted to the reviewers' comments by thinking they were idiots.  Those are the places you need to target, but don't clarify one place only to create confusion elsewhere.

One other thing:  Strive for transparency.  It's hard enough to develop a "voice" in fiction writing.  Trying to develop one in technical writing is folly.  In my 40+ years-long career in the sciences, I have read maybe two papers that were easy to understand, great science, and also very enjoyable to read.  It's very difficult.  By "transparency", I mean that the reader should not be aware of the author, only of the written word and the great information it conveys.  Break up overly long sentences, make sure your grammar and punctuation are perfect (and use the Oxford comma!!!!!), and keep your paragraphs punchy.

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*These are approximations.