What do I mean by "rewriting"?

I don't mean writing one version and then

writing a whole new version from scratch, and then a third. Most rewriting
consists of shaping and polishing the raw material you wrote on your first
try. This means that a certain amount of your typing has already been done.
Let's look at a typical paragraph and imagine that it's the writer's first draft.
There's nothing really wrong with it&emdash;it's clear and it's grammatical.
But it's full of ragged edges: failures of the writer to keep the reader notified
of changes in time, place, and mood, or to animate his style. What I've done
is to add, in brackets after each sentence, some of the thoughts that might
occur to a careful writer taking a first look at this draft. After that the revised
paragraph appears

How do writers revise?

Revision, as I already stated, is a complex process which must take place at a
number of different levels. But there are really only four things that you can do
to change what you have physically written down. These are:
1. Add information, quotes, words, or punctuation that you think will help
make your piece clearer or more descriptive for your reader.
2. Subtract information, quotes, or words that you think don't really add
anything to your writing, or might confuse your reader.
3. Move information, quotes, words, or even entire paragraphs or passages
that you think would make more sense somewhere else.
4. Change or Substitute words for other words, quotes for other quotes,
or less pertinent information for more pertinent information in order to
make your reading clearer, more unified, or more descriptive.

Ok, now that I know what to do, how do I do

it?
Now that you have an indication of what you can do to revise something, you
need to think about where to look at your paper. Revision, like writing, is
usually something that is done from a larger to a smaller scale (although it
doesn't have to be). For example, if you have written a research paper, first,
you identified an overall topic that you wanted to research. Then you narrowed
this down into a research question. Next you answered this question by
creating a working thesis. You explained the thesis in depth by moving through
an outline, answering each section of the outline with research and explanation

and support. Finally you reviewed your work for its appropriateness towards its
audience.

EJEMPLO
There used to be a time when neighbors took care of one another, he
remembered. It no longer seemed to happen that way, however. He
wondered if it was because everyone in the modern world was so busy. It
occurred to him that people today had so many things to do that they didn't
have time any more for old-fashioned friendship. Things didn't work that
way in America in previous eras. And he knew that the situation was very
different in other countries of the world, as he recalled from the years when
he lived in villages in such places as Spain and Italy. It almost seemed to
him that as people got richer and built their houses farther apart they
isolated themselves from the essentials of life. And there was another
thought that troubled him. His friends had deserted him when he needed
them most during his recent illness. It was almost as if they found him guilty
of doing something shameful. He recalled reading somewhere about
societies in primitive parts of the world in which sick people were shunned,
though he had never heard of any such ritual in America.
Now, the revised version:

He remembered that neighbors used to take care of one another. But that
no longer seemed to happen in America. Was it because everyone was so
busy? Were people really so preoccupied with their TV sets and their cars
and their fitness programs that they had no time for friendship? In previous
eras that was never true. Nor was it how families lived in other parts of the
world. Even in the poorest villages of Spain and Italy he recalled how people
would drop in with a loaf of bread. An ironic idea struck him: as people got
richer they cut themselves off from the richness of life. But what really
troubled him was an even more shocking fact. The time when his friends
deserted him was the time when he needed them most. By getting sick he
almost seemed to have done something shameful. He knew that other
societies had a custom of "shunning" people who were very ill. But that
ritual only existed in primitive cultures. Or did it?