When I was just starting out as a writing tutor, I was always concerned with whether I was giving the writers I worked with the “right” or “best” advice. I understood that as a fourth-year English major and WRD minor, my experience with writing could be useful to those who are still familiarizing themselves with the formal demands of higher education; simultaneously, I was always keenly aware of my weaknesses as a writer. As I’ve grown into my position, though, I’ve come to realize that the strength of our writing is often a reflection of our prep work.
Too often I encounter students that identify as “bad writers.” Not only do I think that this is an undeserved assessment based on a subjective opinion of good and bad, but it also hinders one’s confidence to improve. Personally, I prefer to consider writing as strong and weak, rather than good and bad, because this describes the quality of the writing, not the quality of the writer. What “bad” usually indicates is that there is a weakness in the writing that needs to be identified and corrected to better fulfill the writer’s purpose. From my own experience as a student as well as a peer writing tutor, weak points in the writing are often the result of using writing practices not well-suited for our learning styles or of rushing the writing process.
But what is the writing process? When we all first learned how to write an essay, our teachers might have talked to us about brainstorming, drafting, revising, and proofreading our essays before submitting a final draft. They’re the steps that we take, or the process we use, to develop a piece of writing for an audience. This straightforward approach to writing might work for some, but many writers, including me, move around a lot between the ideas that exist in our heads and those that get expressed on the page.
You may not practice this 5-stage approach directly, but it’s important for some version of a writing process with these components to be part of all the writing we do. Some of us may take Stephen King’s approach to the writing process by simply following instinct and inspiration. You might begin with an idea for the end, but ultimately write something entirely different. Others might prefer to do more organization and strategic planning, spending three times longer to plan than to write. Every approach to the writing process is a valid one if it allows you to fully articulate, express, develop, and/or defend your purpose for writing. The traditional approach to the writing process is 5 parts, but I’d rather discuss it as the three main stages.
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Prewriting
The prewriting, or planning, stage of the writing process is the most important–but most sidestepped by writers. Here, you simply think about what you’re going to write, possibly using writing, drawing, or conversation to develop and organize your ideas. For a long time, my approach to writing was to stare at a blank document and wait for inspiration to strike. When I realized that this led to a lot of digressive analyses and unsupported claims, I put more effort into organizing my ideas.
As a visual learner, I find writing detailed outlines to be the most effective way to keep my arguments organized, supported, and succinct. If you are planning a research paper, conducting preliminary research, reading abstracts, and making notes can be a good way to consider the discourse that already exists before contributing to it. Mind-mapping, free writing, and audio-recording yourself thinking through an idea (especially if you’re an auditory learner) are also great prewriting strategies.
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Drafting
When you finally sit down to write, you can’t expect perfection on the first try. When I finally begin to draft my outlines, the act of writing often prompts me to rethink some of my ideas, and I may return to the prewriting stage to develop a new argument or adjust my old one. Drafting should focus on putting the ideas on the page with logical organization and thorough explanation. I personally prefer to begin by writing my body paragraphs; I save the introduction and conclusion until the end when I know what I have written about.
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Revising
Revision is a critical part of the writing process, but like the prewriting stage, it is often overlooked. Revision entails looking back at your work objectively and asking whether it accomplished its purpose. Here, rather than focusing on sentence-level revisions, you want to look for discrepancies in clarity and cohesion, strength and validity of the argument, and adherence to the conventions of the genre such as formatting and style. Revision might also take you back to the drafting or prewriting stage.
Really, there is no wrong way to engage in the writing process; it all depends on who you are as a writer, thinker, and learner. Experimenting with different writing practices and strategies can ultimately lead to some self-discovery about what works best for you and can strengthen your writing skills.