In the last lesson, you examined some web sites that would help you write throughout this course. In this lesson, you're going to take a closer look at the writing process.
The writing process is iterative. While we might wish we could sit down and write a final draft immediately, the task is considerably more difficult for most of us. You may have heard the writing process divided into several stages. One popular division looks like this:
Prewriting - You might prefer to think of the pre-writing stage as the planning stage. In this stage, you will carefully review your writing assignment (and rubric if you received one), brainstorm ideas, identify your audience, visit the library, do research, take notes, organize and refine your ideas, and talk to others about your plans for writing.
Writing - In the writing stage, you create your first draft or your rough draft. In fact, some people call this stage drafting. You can decide what you should include in your paper and what you should exclude. The important thing at this stage is to get your ideas in written form. Try to organize and connect your ideas. Start to explain what you're thinking. Don't be too critical, though. There will be time for that later. Just write and write and write.
Revising - During revision, you begin to think about your reader and what the reader needs to know and how to lead your reader through the topic. You can reorganize the paper to make it easier to understand. You may discover there are additional things you need to include to help the reader understand your writing. Perhaps you need to remove some of the ideas you originally thought were important. In other instances, you'll probably want to replace one word with another you consider more suitable. You may decide to go back and do some more research to fill in some gaps you've identified. Don't shortchange the revision stage. It's too important to abandon prematurely.
Editing - During the editing stage, you begin to put the final polish on your revised work. This is the stage for correcting grammar, spelling, punctuation, wording, sentence structure, and anything else that needs to be fixed. Some people find it helpful to read their work backwards. Mistakes are often more obvious that way. Others like to read each individual sentence for clarity and structure. Many writers ask a peer to edit their work near the end. You should always run your spell-check, but that's no substitute for careful proofreading. Your computer just isn't as smart as you!
Publishing - At the publishing stage, you will put your paper into APA format and share with peers, post on the discussion board, submit to an instructor or to a newspaper, magazine or conference.
Read Chapter 3 in the Publication Manual. Pay special attention to areas you believe you are likely to have problems in and conscientiously work to avoid them in your writing. You will have many opportunities to improve your writing throughout this course.
Be sure to take a closer look at some of these web sites for more details and ideas for each stage of the writing process. Don't expect your writing will be ready to submit for others to read until you've worked through the stages in the writing process.
| Many thanks to the Graphics Communications classes at City College of San Francisco for making the icons used on this page and for making them publicly available. |