The Writing Process in Review

The writing process has several important stages, and you may find yourself having to engage in some of the stages more than once. You may also have to go back and repeat certain stages. This means the process is recursive. The writing process is not necessarily linear, as good writers often have to go back and repeat several stages of their process. For example, once you revise, you may realize you don’t have enough information on a topic and need to go back to do a little brainstorming or freewriting to help you get more ideas. Think back to the Slinky® metaphor. The parts of the writing process connect and loop around each other.

Remember, a thorough writing process will make your writing better! You may continue to have struggles when you write. We all have areas in which we need to improve, but a good writing process will make your writing stronger than it would be otherwise. When you take advantage of each stage of the writing process, you’re helping yourself do your best work!

Listen as these college students talk about what they learned about writing and what they continue to struggle with as they continue with their journeys.

Video Transcript

What are some of the ways you have improved your writing process since taking a college writing class?

What do you continue to struggle with?

Meghan, Nursing: I think some of the biggest improvements I’ve had since taking a college writing course are in my own confidence.

Miranda, Accounting: Some of the ways I’ve improved my writing process would have to be that I learned how to revise first and then edit because you don’t want to edit something that you’re going to take out later. I also learned that good editing takes lots of time. You have to edit your paper more than once or twice because, if you don’t, there is a good likelihood that you’ll miss something.

Cristaliz, Pre-Pharmacy: I have improved in many different ways. First of all, by learning the structure of the essay because there are different kinds of essays. Also, I learned how to order them [essays] together, to put it together. Sometimes, I have problems or trouble with the thesis or getting my ideas on paper. But what I would do is get all of my ideas first on paper; then I’ll try to order them.

Matt, Physical Therapy: One thing that I continue to struggle with are in-text citations. I miss some from time to time. They weren’t really stressed in my high school, so I do slip up sometimes.

Meghan, Nursing: For me I think the hardest part is I think sometimes I go too big in a topic, so sometimes figuring that out. I have all of these lists when I begin writing of what I might want to cover on a certain topic, and so narrowing that down and keeping that focus so that it’s a very clear and concise message sometimes is difficult for me.

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