My Writing Process

The Student's Guide section 3.2, "Discovering Your Writing Process", we learn about four different approaches to writing. These approaches include heavy planners, heavy revisers, sequential composers, and procrastinators. What is most interesting is you can identify with several different approaches at once.

1. Personally, I consider myself to be both a heavy reviser and procrastinator.  It's difficult for me to dedicate time to simply planning what I'm going to be writing. I've found my ideas flow better when I pick a starting point and see where it takes me. However, this style often leaves me with a very rough draft to begin with. I usually need heavy revising before reaching my final draft.

Now on to one of educators worst nightmares...the procrastinator.

Witts, Jonno, "Writers Block (5)" 4/20/2008 via Flickr, Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License

I've fallen into the never ending abyss that is procrastination. I have a hard time motivating myself to work on writing assignments ahead of time. No matter how much time I have for the assignment, a large majority of it is done in the last moments before it is due.

Procrastinating is almost like smoking cigarettes. I know it's bad for me, I just can't help myself.


2. In general, my writing approach brings success. Utilizing heavy revising has several advantages. I can write down whatever thoughts come to me at the time, and if the writing is not sufficient, I can draw on the opinions of my peers, my instructor, and myself to make my writing better.

While procrastination often leads to unnecessary stress, I do feel like generally I accomplish more at the last second.

However, I'm not sure how long this can last.

One of the main drawbacks of being a heavy reviser and procrastinator is time. If for whatever reason I need more time to write my paper, have a peer edit my writing, or get my instructor's opinion, then I'm out of luck. I'm left with what I've done and nothing more.

Combining a heavy reviser and procrastinator is far from the optimal combination of writing styles.


3. As I've forementioned, my writing process includes both heavy revising and procrastination. In the last weeks, days, or hours before a project is due I will do most of my writing. I take my rough drafts and revise them heavily before reaching my final draft.


4. If I were to commit to a new writing style, I think I would learn a lot. I believe a combination of heavy planning and heavy revising would be the optimal writing style.

If I took a writing project and employed planning and revising techniques, I would gain a new perspective on writing. This is a new goal of mine. To take this new approach, utilize it, and understand exactly what writing style is best for me.

EDIT:

After reading several different blogs on the same topic, I realized many people have very similar styles to mine. For example, Hallye Becker identifies most with heavy revisers. Her plan to attempt heavily planning out future projects is something I also want to try.

In addition to many others I identify with, there are some classmates who have very different styles to mine. Swati Chandra made me realize the merit of being a sequential composer. Both planning and improvising a writing assignment allows for a structured yet natural final product.