1.6  The Writing Process: From Prewriting to Publishing

Help Yourself to the Process of Writing

The stages of the writing process-prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, have been compared to steps you climbing steps. This faulty comparison is an example not of thinking inside the box, but of making a box so that everything will fit into neatly.

However, for most people, writing is not a neat, perfectly orderly and sequential process. These steps of the writing process are really overlapping stages of development.

Take a brief survey:

• Do you always prewrite in the same way for the same length of time?
  
• Do you always write a complete first draft before you revise or change anything?
  
• Do you ever stop to correct or replace a word in your first draft?
  
• Do you ever read aloud or show anyone some of your work before it is finished?
  
• Do you always write exactly two drafts?

I think you get the idea. If we're going to use steps as an analogy for stages of writing, then writing is like running up and down the until you're finished and the work is handed in or published in some other way. You move back and forth through stages of development.

The flow chart that follows shows the steps or stages and the traits of effective writing (from the rubric) that are especially important at each point. For this example, let's say the writing is not something you chose to write; the writing is a task or prompt, an essay you have to write. Let's say it is an independent writing task, so there is only the task to read. Part of your prewriting is to read and analyze the task.

What you do During the Writing Process

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