The Writing Process
The writing process involves several steps, meant toenhance both your thinking and argumentation and yourvoice and style. You’ll be doing a lot of writing in thisclass, and much of it will be processorientedthat means,it will focus on the prewriting or ideagenerating stage asdistinct from the drafting stage as distinct from therevising stage as distinct from the editing phase. The idea,in processbased approaches to writing, is that the piece isnever “finished,” and the process of generating ideas isiterative. This means that as you write and draft andrevise, you are also learning about your ideas and gettingto know them more fully. We get our ideas in partfrom writing; they don’t spring from our headsfullyformed, like Athena from the head of Zeus.
Image: Attic blackfigured amphora, third quarter of the 6th centuryBC. Side A: birth of weaponed Athena who emerged from Zeus' head(detail). Fould Collection. Musée du Louvre.
Prewriting: Analyzing your audience, determining your purpose in writing, limiting the scope ofwhat you will cover, and generating potential content. Prewriting can look like notes, freewriting,brainstorming or cluster maps, and so on. If research is involved, it will also include finding andreading sources, annotating them, and thinking about how they intersect with or help constructyour ideas.
Drafting: Making a case and structuring your evidence for that case. Now, your work is beginningto look like a “response essay” or a “blog post” or a “research essay” and so on.
Feedback: From your instructor, a peer, or a tutor, you get a sense of someone else’sperspectivethis is important because it helps you develop an awareness of your audience, and italso attunes you to other people. You will become a better writer as you learn how to read andrespond to others’ drafts, and how to evaluate peer responses so they can best help you refineyour ideas.
Revising: Putting yourself in the place of the reader, rethinking your approach, and makingchanges that will improve your case. Note that this is not proofreading! This is reseeing yourargument with the benefit of new and refined ideas! Sometimes, we might call this “globalrevision.”
Polishing: Editing and proofreading to eliminate errors and improve the coherence and readabilityof your presentation.
For the visuallyinclined, here’s a diagram showing the relationships between these steps
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