College Writing

College Writing Study Guide

Chapter 4: The Writing Process

Learning Objectives This chapter will discuss: 1. All three main steps of the writing process 2. Structured and unstructured pre-writing 3. Composition

4. Revision As you approach the exam or any writing project in your professional life, your immediate focus might be on �inishing the project as quickly as possible, and in an exam like this, there is an uncom- fortable performative element to the exchange: you must prove – or perform – for the test readers who are judging your capabilities. The amount of pressure involved in that outlook often causes anx- iety, stress, and most of all, bad writing. The dynamic of test-taker/test-evaluator is not present in any other facet of adult life and will not characterize your relationship with your readers in other writing situations, so what is the best way to resolve the many problems presented by viewing writ- ing as a performative product? View writing as a process. Writing as a process recognizes several important facts about writing. First, writing is never really �inished. You can run out of time, and you can get your writing to the point where it is “good enough,” but a perfect piece of writing doesn’t exist, which means there is always more work that can be done on a piece of writing. Second, no piece of writing comes fully formed out of an author’s head. Every word, every sentence, and most importantly, every idea is the result of an often agonizing thought process. Focusing on writing as a process recognizes the effort that goes into producing a good doc- ument. Last, writing is an opportunity to explore ideas. If you’ve ever kept a journal or diary, you know that while writing your thoughts or feelings, you realized new things about yourself and what you were writing about. Eng aging in self- re�lection allows you to think about your thoughts, and writ- ing gives you a way to “get outside” your own understanding of your subject, coming to a subjective realization that you would not otherwise be able to �ind. By concentrating onwriting as a process, you remove the performative aspect of test-taking and focus on what matters most about writing: communicating your ideas to another human being. 4.1 Invention – Good Ideas and Where You Find Them Science �ictionwriter Harlan Ellisonwas fre quently askedwhere he got his ideas from. “Schenectady,” he joked. “There’s this ‘idea service’ in Schenectady and every week like clockwork they send me a fresh six-pack of ideas for 25 bucks.” Ellison’s joke highlights the misunderstanding that many hav e about idea-generation: good ideas come from you and your hard work; no one can give you a good idea.

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