My Writing Process

In this post, I will focus on my past writing processes.

Mills, Amanda. "Female hands writing on a laptop keyboard" Public Domain.

1.     I consider myself to be a heavy reviser. I usually do not plan ahead of time; when an idea comes I feel the need to start writing immediately. It is almost like I fear losing my ideas and must document them before they leave my mind and the more ideas come to me. However, after finishing my drafts, I read carefully over them and always find a multitude of errors or unclear thoughts. Often times, I will find insignificant details and sentences that have nothing to do with what my initial ideas were. I also write too much, I find myself going over the word limit and having to go back through my writings and clean them up.

2.     My writing process definitely includes the above approaches; however, I focus heavily on some approaches more than others. As I had mentioned above, naturally I am a heavy reviser. But often times I also find myself to procrastinate on my writings. Because ideas tend to come to me as I write, I push off planning and thinking of ideas beforehand. It is difficult for me to focus in public places with several distractions; I prefer to begin brainstorming ideas when I am sitting at my own desk with my computer or in the library. I may not necessarily be a “heavy” planner, but when I am able to focus, I organize my ideas thoroughly.

3.     I truly believe that my writing process is successful. It may not work for everyone, but it certainly works for me. I thoroughly enjoy writing and that is because the way that I choose to create my writings is a comfortable way that does not stress me out or confuse me. A significant strength of being a heavy reviser is being able to catch my own mistakes. People often say practice makes perfect, and I have never heard a more true statement. The more I revise, the less mistakes I make in the future, thus making my revising process shorter. A weakness of my approach would be the procrastination that comes with being a poor planner. It is almost as if I use my poor planning skills as an excuse to delay my writings until the last minute.

4.     It would be beneficial for me to try a different approach because my strengths in writing are focused mostly on revising and my weaknesses are in all of the other approaches. By practicing other approaches, I would be strengthening my skills to become an overall better writer. Writing is about being creative and open to new ideas, therefore I will not restrict myself to one writing approach simply because it is the one I am most comfortable with.