Image: The writing process. From Coffin, C., Curry, …The Writing Process The writing process...

The Writing Process

The writing process involves several steps, meant toenhance both your thinking and argumentation and yourvoice and style. You’ll be doing a lot of writing in thisclass, and much of it will be process­oriented­­that means,it will focus on the pre­writing or idea­generating stage asdistinct from the drafting stage as distinct from therevising stage as distinct from the editing phase. The idea,in process­based approaches to writing, is that the piece isnever “finished,” and the process of generating ideas isiterative. This means that as you write and draft andrevise, you are also learning about your ideas and gettingto know them more fully. We get our ideas in partfrom writing; they don’t spring from our headsfully­formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus.

Image: Attic black­figured amphora, third quarter of the 6th centuryBC. Side A: birth of weaponed Athena who emerged from Zeus' head(detail). Fould Collection. Musée du Louvre.

Prewriting: Analyzing your audience, determining your purpose in writing, limiting the scope ofwhat you will cover, and generating potential content. Pre­writing can look like notes, freewriting,brainstorming or cluster maps, and so on. If research is involved, it will also include finding andreading sources, annotating them, and thinking about how they intersect with or help constructyour ideas.

Drafting: Making a case and structuring your evidence for that case. Now, your work is beginningto look like a “response essay” or a “blog post” or a “research essay” and so on.

Feedback: From your instructor, a peer, or a tutor, you get a sense of someone else’sperspective­­this is important because it helps you develop an awareness of your audience, and italso attunes you to other people. You will become a better writer as you learn how to read andrespond to others’ drafts, and how to evaluate peer responses so they can best help you refineyour ideas.

Revising: Putting yourself in the place of the reader, rethinking your approach, and makingchanges that will improve your case. Note that this is not proofreading! This is re­seeing yourargument with the benefit of new and refined ideas! Sometimes, we might call this “globalrevision.”

Polishing: Editing and proofreading to eliminate errors and improve the coherence and readabilityof your presentation.

For the visually­inclined, here’s a diagram showing the relationships between these steps

Image: The writing process. From Coffin, C., Curry, M. J., Goodman, S., Hewings, A., Lillis, T. M., & Swann, J.Teaching Academic Writing: A Toolkit for Higher Education. London and New York: Routledge: Taylor & FrancisGroup. 2003. 37.