Hi, this segment is about understanding your writing process, and before we even get started I want to say that I'm not going to prescribe a particular process for you. What's important about the writing process is that you reflect on what works for you, what doesn't work for you, what you'd like to do differently. What you do differently across different occasions for writing. I would also like to have this unit enable you to talk to each other about your writing processes so perhaps you can borrow an idea from somebody else and experiment with it and that will help you with your writing process. So, again, I'm not trying to prescribe a particular writing process. These processes vary drastically across writers, across writing projects, and across different disciplines. The writing process in general, has four stages. These are recursive and overlapping stages. So it's not linear and you don't move necessarily from one through the other. But in general, writers usually approach a writing project by thinking about a pre-drafting stage. Where you are deciding what it is you're going to write and thinking about your writing project, then you move into drafting. Which is where you're actively writing? Then you might move into revision, which is where you're rethinking what you have to write. And finally, at a certain point, perhaps when you're up against a deadline. Or you're just tired of your project, you hit the editing and proofreading stage, which is smaller polishing. Here's an example of the writing process and how recursive and overlapping it is. If you're like me, for instance, you might start with thinking about a particular project and then move to, at some point, actually writing about it but then move back to thinking about it and then move to revision. And then maybe, I often move back to thinking about it again. And at some point after I've done enough of these cycles, back and forth and back and forth and been pretty non-linear about it. I will finally reach a stage where I need to be editing and proofreading. And that's most of the time near when a stage is moving towards its final product. So, with the pre-drafting again as I said, it's about thinking, reading, researching, planning. There are many different strategies you can use for pre-drafting, one you already tried because it was the timeline that we did for the introducing yourself as a writer to your classmates and me. Other versions of prewriting include thinking, analyzing, questioning, reading, brainstorming, outlining, talking, journaling, note taking anything you think of that can help you decide what to say for a writing project would be pre-drafting. Drafting is when you're actually writing. And this again too, I don't approach this in a linear fashion where I start on page one and move all the way through a writing project, and have a full complete draft. You might do that, and that's great. And maybe that's a really effective way to approach the process. I rarely approach a piece of writing like that. But drafting is where you're actually actively writing. Revision for me is the hardest and most complicated aspect of writing. It's where you're doing substantive rethinking about what it is that you're seeing and how you're seeing it involves thinking about such aspects as reorganizing, adding material, deleting material, rethinking what you have to say. And then finally, there's the editing and proofreading, which is distinguished from revision because it's editing and proofreading is about the smaller kind of local changes. I find editing actually pretty easy. I'm not necessarily good at it because I miss a lot of small proofreading changes. I bet you've probably already found a couple of errors on the course assignments even though I've read them so carefully and other people have too. But anyways I do like editing and proofreading though because Editing and Proofreading involves looking at grammar, clarity, spelling, punctuation, sentence level issues, word choice, it's about polishing a piece of writing and I find that to be fun. Revision I find hard and sometimes difficult, because I'm not sure if I'm actually saying what I want to say or saying it how I want to say it. So I tend to spend a long time with revision and less time with editing, maybe I should spend more time with editing. Again, here are the stages of the writing process and I also wanted to point out at this time what the writing process doesn't include which to me is a little more interesting then the four stages that I just spent time taking you through. What the writing process doesn't include are how writers feel throughout the process. So for me, generally when I'm in the pre-writing, pre-drafting stage, I'm pretty happy. I love to think about writing projects, more over ideas, spend time reflecting on what I want to say. That's really fun, I love to read what other people have written and do research, that's fun for me. The drafting stage and even this revision stage, if I can collapse those for a minute. At this point, generally I tend to, probably feel a little unhappy or scared. [laugh] Somewhere, probably at this arrow, is where I'm most worried about a particular writing project, because I feel like I haven't thought through it enough, or I'm not ready to start writing, or I don't really like my ideas enough, or I don't know what I'm going to, to say, or I get caught up in what readers are going to think about what I've said, that they're not going to hear me or they're not going to like what I said or they're going to reject what I had to say. And then with the revision sometimes I'm not totally happy because I feel like I spend too long on the revision stage. And I get a little tired of what I'm writing and it's never quite reaching what I want it to say. But again here with editing and I usually get happy here. Another thing that the writing process, as I outlined it, doesn't get at are various rituals or quirks that writers have around writing. You might have a particular pen that you like to use. Or a particular place you like to go. Or you might have to have two cups of coffee of a particular kind, or tea. Before you start writing, or you might have to go for a walk for ten minutes before you start writing. All of those things are really interesting to me anyways, the rituals and quirks that circulate around the writing process. And finally, the third aspect that this overview doesn't get at that I'm interested in thinking about are also disciplinary distinctions and how writing processes just vary. I'll just put a wiggly line to show that writing processes vary dramatically across writing projects. I might use one process for writing an email to a friend that's very different then a process I would use for creating a 25 page article for potential publication in a journal. The writing process you use for writing for this class might look pretty different than writing that you're doing for other classes, or for your job, or in your personal life. And the writing process that I do for scholarship in my discipline of writing studies and English literature. Might look really different from my colleague in ecology does for articles in her discipline or what my colleague in anthropology does for articles in his discipline. So I'd really like us to begin thinking about not just in general the writing process but specifically about these three things, oops, lets include that too. Okay, that how writers feel Throughout the process what your particular quirks are. Maybe there's another stage that hyou want to include that you think needs to be there that's not there. And then also how it varies across writing projects and across disciplines. So I invite you to please visit the discussion forum and have these converstaions. Share with each other these more interesting unique aspects of the writing process. And also please watch the videos of our disciplinary consultants, who will talk about the writing processes in variant different disciplines.
