THE WRITING PROCESS

The Fantasy: "Writing a paper the night before it is due works and gets me decent grades."

The Truth: Many students, like you, come to college believing that the proper way to write a paper is to wait until the last possible moment, gulp down a large caffinated beverage, bang out a draft, run spell check, and then hand in the "finished" paper for a grade. Doing so, you may have received grades that satisfied you, but this is no longer high school. Standards in college are much higher. One of the most common complaints college instructors hear from students is that "I used to write 'A' papers in high school." That may have been true, but in college, your professors will expect more from you than the first and only draft you banged out while watching late night TV the night before the paper was due.

What to Do: Treat writing as a process through which you flesh out your ideas by prewriting, drafting, and revision to create more sophisiticated texts. Writing is not simply starting at the beginning and writing straight through until the end. You need to do all of the following:

• Come up with ideas worth writing about (prewriting/invention)
• Write out these ideas in paragraphs (drafting)
• Read what you wrote and rework it to make sure it says what you want it to say (revision)
• Spot errors in mechanics and grammar (editing)

This process, though, is not linear: you may start by prewriting, draft a large block of text, take time to revise, and then realize that you don't have a solid idea of what your point is. A poor writer will ignore this; a strong writer will sit down and prewrite again, this time focusing on the specific content that requires development. At any point in the writing process, you might shift from drafting to revision to prewriting to editing and back again. The writing process is, in this respect, recursive.

Help with the Writing Process:

• Purdue University's On-line Writing Lab offers a great tutorial on the Writing process that covers the following:

  Prewriting and Invention Strategies

  Drafting Issues

  Revision, Editing, and Proofreading

Other Sites of Interest

• The Writing Process Web Site

This site by Conn McQuinn offers a useful--if somewhat silly--video and text presentation about the different stages of the writing process.

• Introduction to the Writing Process
  

This site by Sue Tomlinson discusses the writing process, noting how to take advantage of right and left brain activity to make the most of your time.

• Cleveland State University Writing Center's Description of the Writing Process