If nothing else, I’m glad I found this book because of one passage on page 56. Normally, when I read about “The Writing Process,” it never matches with mine. It’s either so neat and completely thought-out that I’d have to write the paper and go backwards to achieve that level of organization on my outlines and notecards, or it is so freeform that I’d go crazy—days and days of freewriting leading to multiple uncontrolled drafts that are somehow supposed to morph into a finished product.
But in her discussion of writing styles, a man named Peter shares his:
I don’t know whether my procedure for papers will work for chapters, although I suspect it will. Perhaps the word “procedure” implies more planning and organization than actually gets done. My mess stage generally consists of an assortment of notes jotted down here and there, a pile of books full of stickies, many of which have a few notes jotted down on them, and an array of thoughts floating around in my head. Sometimes I make a rough outline to sort out what to present when. Sometimes I structure my first couple of paragraphs in such a way that they provide a roadmap I use for writing. Sometimes I have an idea in my head of the way the paper should progress. Then I sit down and write. Sometimes what I write follows the outline, but often the outline changes as I progress through the paper. I often use quotations or passages that I am analyzing as moorings for my thoughts. When I am writing I also tend to do a fair amount of in-process sentence-level editing. I know that this “procedure” would be a recipe for disaster for certain types of writers, but it seems to work for me.
Copy cat.
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