Part II. The Writing Process | Read, Think, Write | AU Press—Digital Publications
Part II The Writing Process
Many students feel overwhelmed when facing an assignment, a deadline, and a blank page. Experienced writers, when faced with that blank page, remind themselves that writing—like baking or sketching or gardening—is a process consisting of distinct steps that must be performed in the correct order to achieve success. They know that if they follow an established process step by step, they will successfully complete their writing task.
Experienced writers also know that writing is a skill, and like every other skill—whether it’s baking cakes or scoring goals or speaking French—writing becomes significantly easier with practice.
Successful writers—whether they write films, novels, songs, business proposals, advertisements, or essays—do not write a perfect final copy of a text in one day. They use a process, a series of steps or stages, and this process takes time. The more substantial and important the final piece of writing will be, the more time it will take.
What Is the Writing Process?
Just as you need a recipe, ingredients, and proper tools to cook a delicious meal, you also need a plan, resources, and adequate time to create an effective piece of writing. Effective writing can be simply described as good ideas that are expressed well and arranged in the proper order. To communicate your ideas effectively in writing, follow the steps of the writing process outlined in Figure P2.1.
Figure P2.1: The Writing Process
Illustration by Jessica Tang.
- Prewriting: Generating ideas for writing
In response to an assignment or another writing task, the writer generates ideas to write about and begins developing these ideas using one or more prewriting techniques.
- Planning and outlining: Organizing your ideas and planning to write
The writer settles on a central message to convey, chooses an overall organizational structure for the writing based on the requirements of the task, and creates a plan or an outline.
- Drafting: Developing your ideas into a piece of writing
The writer uses the work completed in the first two stages to write a first draft. The first draft includes the ideas the writer brainstormed in the first step, organized into a structure that was chosen in the second step. In the case of an essay, the draft will be composed of complete sentences and paragraphs.
- Revising: Improving what you’ve written
The writer reviews the first draft several times and reshapes its content with the goal of ensuring that the central message is conveyed as clearly as possible. The writer may go through several different drafts before settling on a final draft in which the key points are logically and articulately presented.
- Editing: Improving how you’ve written
Editing requires slow and careful rereading of the entire piece of writing. In this step, the writer focuses on how the ideas have been conveyed and ensures that the wording is as clear and precise as possible.
- Proofreading: Polishing your writing for an audience
In the proofreading stage, the writer corrects errors in spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and format to make the reader’s job easier. The reader should be able to easily read the text, focusing on the ideas without being distracted by errors.
- Publishing: Sharing your ideas with an audience
Once the text has been edited, it is ready to publish! In a university course, publishing may mean submitting an assignment to an instructor or posting a paragraph to an online student forum. In other contexts, publishing may mean submitting a report to a boss, sharing a poem with a friend, sending a letter to the editor of a newspaper, or mailing out your family’s annual Christmas letter. In essence, then, publishing means sharing your writing with others so that they can read and appreciate your ideas.
The Recursive Writing Process
It’s important to remember that the writing process is not linear. In other words, a writer does not move straight through the steps from prewriting to proofreading, one after the other, without ever going back. Instead, writing is a recursive process, which means that a writer will sometimes need to return briefly to a previous step before moving forward.
Figure P2.2 illustrates how a student writer, Mia, moves through the process, occasionally returning to previous stages as she develops her essay.
This section of the textbook will give you the chance to practice these important steps in the writing process. You may find that some of them are familiar to you, while others may be new. You may find that you are confident about some steps but uncertain about others. Take the time to learn how to effectively use each step of the writing process—particularly the ones you are not yet familiar with. Using these strategies can help you overcome the fear of the blank page and confidently begin the writing process.
Figure P2.2: The Recursive Writing Process
Illustration by Jessica Tang.
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