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Destiny Drees

Professor Pierson

October 12, 2017

Writing and Revising Process

Everyone has a specific way of writing. There are certain environments that a person

must be a part of and even noise levels that can affect the outcome of the entire paper.

Berkenkotter found that people have processes during their writing that they did not even know

they did (1983). This is no different with me and my writing process. I do many things when I

am prewriting/planning, writing, and revising/editing. I have a specific place I love to write and

many challenges that I face along the way.

Writing essays and papers for classes are the main types of writing that I do that include a

large amount of time and critical thinking. The readings that we have done in class have brought

some things to light for me about how I write that I did not realize before. Neto made note of

distractions that had an affected his writing such as; texting, making calls and writers block

(2014) all of which I can relate all too well to. He got over this by making a checklist of his own

writing in order to allow him to focus on what he has written and allow him to keep everything.

These writers have taught me to try new things such as saying my plans aloud (Perl, 1979) which

will allow me to process my thoughts more clearly. Also, these writers made me feel more

confident in myself and my writing because I used to worry about how much I could not focus

and how all over the place my writing process is, and I now realized that all writers experience

these struggles and have to overcome them.

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When I prewrite for essays, I start with the outline. I determine what I want to focus on

and where I might end up. When I go through my outline, I answer questions asked using as

many main ideas I would like to discuss throughout the whole paper. I write down stories from

my life relating to the topic that come from experiences with my friends and family. This helps

me communicate with my audience and help them get know who I am when they are reading my

paper which I have learned is important from Perl (1979). When I am working on my outline I

make sure that I also include small details that I would forget otherwise. I do not have to include

every detail because I know that if I just have the main points that I would like to include and

explain, I can go from there to add the major details needed to help my readers clearly

understand.

Before I start to write, I must be in a familiar environment. Ittersum has made me feel

better about my lack of focus, stating that peoples memory has decreased steadily since

technology has increased (2009). I am prone to getting distracted by noises, things on the walls,

and people. This is definitely a flaw that I have and am trying to find ways to minimize the times

I have to step away from my paper because of being distracted. I try to put instrumental music on

in the background to drown out people that may be passing by. When I am at home, cars seem to

be one of the main noise makers contributing to causing distractions. They play their music

loudly and rev their engines in order to intimidate other motorists. This in turn causes me to look

outside to see what is happening and who is causing the noise.

I begin writing by looking at what I have written in my outline and start with the main

points and ideas that I have listed as important. I always start by writing the introduction, which

feels like it takes forever for me to ever actually start my first sentence. I want my introduction to

be perfect the first time so that I do not have to rewrite the entire thing. I usually end up coming
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back to it and making sure it is still relatable by the end of my writing. I think about how I can

relate to my intended audience and add necessary details. A lot of the time I end up texting,

calling my girlfriend, and looking up things on the internet to get a break from writing. I do not

necessarily see this as a bad thing all of the time. It is good to take breaks from writing to allow

ones mind to rest, it is actually encouraged. When I finally get back to writing I have to reread

the sentence or paragraph I was working on to refocus myself. This is a continuous cycle that

lasts several days.

I do not enjoy editing or revising papers that I have done. Most of the time, once I have

turned a paper in, I have a strong urge to never look at that paper again. I do make sure to make

edits and revisions along the way. I always reread paragraphs after I finish them to make sure

there are not any sentence fragments, spelling errors, grammatical errors, and to make sure that

the overall flow and structure of the paragraph is as close to perfect as I can get it. I like to ask

myself questions along the way about how I can add more detail about certain things that I am

describing or talking about to allow my reader to have all of the information. When revising I

reread my paper aloud to catch mistakes more easily. I do not like to have other people revise my

papers unless it is required because I am either afraid of what they might think of me and my

writing, or I do not feel like some people are qualified to read my paper. For example; if I were

to ask my dad to make revisions on this paper, I would feel less confident in his understanding of

the key terms we have talked about in class rather than if I have a person in class read over my

paper and made revisions. I am cautious of who I ask to read over my paper.

After thinking about all the things that make up my writing process, I understand that

some things need to change. I am working with my writing process as a hierarchical system

(Flower and Hayes, 1981). I need to make all of the steps of my writing process a priority. It
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would be extremely beneficial if I could not become distracted as easily, but this might be the

only aspect that is out of my hands. I do try different things to see if they will help such as;

moving to a different area, playing music, staying at home rather than writing in a new

environment. My prewriting seems to be working but I think I could add some thinking aloud to

help keep thoughts flowing. My revising and editing process needs to be improved

tremendously. I need to start reading my paper multiple times after being finished in order to

improve on things that I did not catch while writing. I also plan on letting peers review my paper

more to receive feedback. This seems to be very effective and helps get a sense of what my

audience is looking for. These things will effectively improve the way and what I write.
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Works Cited

Berkenkotter, C. (1983). Decisions and Revisions: The Planning Strategies of a Publishing

Writer. In E. Wardle & D. Downs (Eds.). Writing about Writing: A college reader (pp.

830-846). Boston: Bedford/St. Martins.

Flower, L., & Hayes, J. (1981). A cognitive process theory of writing. College Composition and

Communication, 32(4), 365-387. doi:10.2307/356600

Ittersum, D. (2009). Distributing memory: rhetorical work in digital environments. Technical

Communication Quarterly, 18(3), 259-280. doi:10.1080/10572250902942026

Neto, A.S. (2014). Tug of War. In E. Wardle & D. Downs (Eds.). Writing about Writing: A

college reader (pp.774-785). Boston: Bedford/St. Martins.

Perl, S. (1979). The Composing Process of Unskilled College Writers. In E. Wardle & D. Downs

(Eds.). Writing about Writing: A college reader (pp. 738-772). Boston: Bedford/St.

Martins.