Redgardless of the length or the complexity of a writing assignment, the writing process involves pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing and proofreading, and publishing.

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THE WRITING PROCESS

2. It involves steps: prewriting, drafting, revising,
editing and proofreading, and publishing.
It is a recursive process, though, because
sometimes it requires going some steps either
backward or forward in order to appropriately
meet the standards of a writing task.
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3. It involves…
◦ finding an idea or topic worth writing about
◦ understanding clearly the writing assignment that we have
been given
◦ being clear about our audience and purpose for writing
(explain, describe, persuade, entertain…)
◦ learning as much about the writing topic as we can
◦ forming a preliminary thesis (a sentence that summarizes
the main idea that we wish to convey)
◦ planning our writing by means of an outline (a hierarchical
list of the topics we wish to develop in the essay).
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4. INVENTION TECHNIQUES: freewriting,
quickwriting, and idea mapping
◦ Freewriting is basically taking a blank sheet of paper and
writing down all the ideas that come to our mind in no
organized fashion.
◦ For quickwriting the procedure is basically the same, only
that in quickwriting the ideas we write down must revolve
around either a broad or specific topic, like sports, for
example.
◦ Idea mapping involves narrowing down a topic by building
a concept map that branches out of a broad topic, such as
college education, for instance.
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5. FOR RESEARCH PROJECTS
◦ FINDING PRIMARY SOURCES
 INTERVIEWS, SURVEYS, OBSERVATIONS…
◦ FINDING SECONDARY SOURCES
 BOOKS, JOURNALS, MAGAZINES…
◦ EXTENSIVE NOTE TAKING
◦ COMING UP WITH A PRELIMINARY THESIS
STATEMENT AND OUTLINE
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6. Using our planning as a guide,
our main concern should be to
get all the ideas down without
concentrating on doing it with
perfect grammar, spelling and
punctuation, among other things.
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7. Keeping in mind our purpose for writing, the
thesis, and the intended audience, we should
add, cut, and/or rearrange ideas as necessary
to obtain a unified, coherent essay.
Have someone, for example a friend, a relative,
your instructor and/or your classmates, read
your work and give you feedback on the content
from their perspective as readers.
RREEVVIISSIIOONN

8. Take into consideration the feedback obtained
during the previous step (or not).
Test your essay for sense and coherence.
Check for errors in usage, mechanics, sentence
structure and grammar.
Prepare a neat, well formatted copy of your
writing, and proofread the final draft for errors
before submitting it.
Now it would be a good time again to have a
few people look at your writing and make
suggestions for improvement.
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9. After following all the previous steps, either in
order or recursively, we are ready to submit our
work in class or for publication.
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10. After following all the previous steps, either in
order or recursively, we are ready to submit our
work in class or for publication.
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