My Writing Process

My mother always tells me that I'm lucky because writing is not a torture to me. When she went back to school to get her MSN, she joked with third grade me, saying that she wished I could write her papers for her! In this post, I'll describe my personal writing process and analyze its effectiveness.

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1. What type(s) of writer do you consider yourself to be?

I can say with certainty that I am a heavy planner, and have been as long as I can remember. It makes my brain extremely happy to be able to organize my thoughts in pencil on a piece of paper. I think this comes from my general desire in life to have all my ducks in a row. Planning out the objective of my writing, the main points I want to make to achieve that objective, and any other relevant details assures me that I'm doing the assignment correctly. Without an outline, I feel like I'm drifting in a sea of unknowns.

2. Does your writing process include several of the above approaches? If so, which ones?

I definitely find myself able to think about my writing "in all sorts of places" once I have set something to paper. If I have at least a base for my writing, the content comes to me organically without a whole lot of focus or strain. I do however, contrary to the archetype, revise pretty heavily after I've written the first draft. I always see opportunities to make things sound better or make more sense.

3. Does your writing process seem to be successful? What are the strengths and weaknesses of your approach?

I would consider mine a successful approach because I'm able to produce writing efficiently once I've planned it out. The big problem I encounter, however, is when tasked with a timed writing or other situation where I'm not given the luxury of time to brainstorm, I get flustered and tend to feel lost. It is important to me that I keep on working at the skill of relaxing and just writing without a detailed plan of attack.

4. Do you think it might be beneficial for you to try a different approach? Why or why not?

As I mentioned above, I'm always aware of opportunities in which I need to just write and not get bogged down in thinking too much. I suppose I'll always feel that inclination in me to flesh out the work before I write, but I hope to balance that with a more on-my-feet approach.

Reflection: After perusing the blogs of others, I've realized that procrastination is the epidemic of our generation! Just kidding, I love all you people that can function under that kind of pressure. As I told Annelise, my body would just shut down under the strain of doing things last minute. But I do realize that I have a lot to learn from last-minute writers, mainly the ability to produce work without substantial planning first. I feel like the real world will throw this at me a lot in the future.

It really was reassuring to read that Mark also feels that the quality of his work goes down when he's not given enough time to plan. With all the timed writes that I had to do in high school, I started to feel as if I was the only one who stressed out over the lack of outline time. Now I only have to remember Mark when I feel crushed by the pressure to perform in a short amount of time.