My Writing Process

For me writing always has a purpose, and usually that purpose involves school or work. When I write I have a specific goal in mind and that influences how I go about the writing. The majority of the time, the hardest part about writing for me is deciding what I want to say.

Whenever I sit down to write I have to organize my thoughts way before putting any words onto the page. I am one of those people who will ramble on in their writing to waste time while I think of the next important thing that I want to say. To avoid that I try to think about and organize what I want to say in my head before I put it down on paper. I don't have to organize everything that I am going to say, but it really helps me to decide every point I want to touch on in my writing. That way when I begin to run out of things to say about one idea, I can simply move onto the next and not jumble everything up while I try to figure out what I am looking to say next.

Once I actually start my writing, things tend to flow fairly easily for me. Every once in a while I may stop and think of a better way to word something, or a better way to describe the things I am saying, but for the most part I leave that to the revision process and just get what I want to say onto the paper. Usually if I just focus on making it simple and concrete, I don't have to tweak it as much after the fact because it makes sense to me and sounds like me.

 The approaches I use also differ slightly based on the type of writing I am doing. If it is a scientific paper or a lab report, I try to be as straightforward as possible because the only thing that matters is cramming as much information and reasoning into as few words as possible. On the other hand, writing an essay involves much more freedom where I can play with the language and expand much more on my thoughts or ideas.

My approach to writing can change depending on the purpose of the writing, but I always try to decide the main points I want to touch on before I begin. Then I just do my best to let my thoughts flow onto the paper to fill in the gaps with whatever comes naturally to me in the context of the piece.