The document discusses various prewriting techniques to help discover what you want to say without anxiety, including brainstorming, focused freewriting, and clustering. It mentions making lists of everything that comes to mind about the topic without self-criticism. Clustering involves writing the topic in the center and surrounding it with related ideas, trusting your own connections between ideas.

1. Thinking and writing…without freaking out

2.  Prewriting helps you
discover what you want Brainstorming
to say.
 Think of this as thinking Focused Freewriting
on the page.
Clustering
Journalist’s Questions

4.  Just make a list of
everything that comes to
you about the topic. Politeness
Whether this is without
information that you insipidness
have gained in the Makes for a better community
readings or outside
Seems on the decline
information or even your
experiences. Is civility valued more by certain age
groups?
Is it practiced more by a certain sex or
age group?

5.  Focus on your topic and
write quickly for a
predetermined amount
of time. 10-15 minutes
works well. Ignore your
inner-critic who keeps
telling you that this
sounds stupid or that it
doesn’t make any sense.
 Keep your topic in mind,
but just write down what
comes to you about it

7.  “To cluster ideas, write
down your topic in the
center of the sheet of
paper, draw a circle around
it, and surround the circle
with related ideas” (Hacker
13).
 Make sure to trust your
relations/connections .
 You don’t need someone's
permission to connect two
unrelated things.