How to write or how not to write, that is the question...

     The stages of the writing process consists of: understanding the task, gathering data, Invention, drafting, revision, and editing.  To understand the task, read or create the assignment.  Understand its purpose,scope, and audience.  Locate and review information from sources and from your own experience and formulate an approach when gathering data.  During invention, use various techniques to generate promising ideas and a particular approach to the assignment.  If needed, gather more data.  Aim for a working thesis, a tentative but well-reasoned and well-informed statement of the direction you intend to pursue.  When drafting, sketch the paper you intend to compose and then write all sections necessary to support the working thesis. Stop if necessary to gather more data. Typically, you will both follow your plan and revise and invent a new plan as you write.  To make your draft coherent and unified, you can rewrite it.  Revise at the global and local levels by reshaping your thesis and adding to, rearranging, or deleting paragraphs in order to support the thesis or ensuring that each paragraph is well-reasoned and supports the thesis.  Editing is the last and most important thing.  Revise at the sentence level for style and brevity.  Revise for correctness: grammar, punctuation, usage, and spelling.  (Much of this information was taken from "A sequence for Academic Writing" 5th addition.)
     The techniques I use to write a paper are similar to the ones that Behrens discusses.  I use most of the stages like:  understanding the task, gathering data, Invention, revision, and editing.  I, unlike Behrens, use only five steps, leaving out drafting.  I have found drafting unhelpful.  To some it is a useful tool, but I do all my drafting in my head so when I sit down at the computer, I'm ready to type without having any distractions.  I believe that understanding the task is the most important stage.  If you don't understand what you're supposed to do, you will have a weak thesis, and without a strong thesis it will make writing the paper a harder task.  I think that drafting is the least important because it is easy to get an idea about what you want to write when you do the first step, understanding the task.  I always formulate an idea of my paper in my head and then type it out.  Writing out a full draft tends to distract me and sometimes limits me when I'm trying to think of more ideas for my paper.  The easiest part of the process is gathering data.  If you are using sources like books or the internet, these things are very available and easy to use.  The hardest stage is invention, specifically finding a working thesis.  It is hard to formulate one that is narrow enough that you can write a good paper and find research on.  But when you do have a strong thesis, the paper seems to write itself.  I send the most time revising my papers to make sure they are coherent and in a good and unified order.  I spend the least time on editing because once I have revised my paper, it is in the order I want it, now I'm just looking for any small errors I have missed.  
   
        

Open a Vein

     Ever since I was little, I have loved journals.  I didn't necessarily write in them, I just collected them.  I would write in one journal one day, and switch to a different one the next time I wrote.  It wasn't until high school that I started keeping a actual journal that I wrote in pretty regularly.  However, when I write, it's not as much about what I did that day, because I feel it's pretty boring when I write that down.  It's more what I felt that day.  If I had a bad day or feel stressed, I write everything down.  I helps to get it out, and usually I feel better and find a solution to my problems in the process.  I feel that writing is a fun and effective way to communicate with people.  My great-grandma and I communicate through e-mail because she lives in Connecticut and I'm in Illinois.  I know there are faster ways to communicate, but sometimes there are things that can only be said in writing.
     Through school I have naturally written many papers for assignments; however, I find that I prefer research papers more than just opinion papers or creative papers.  I love dealing with the facts and providing people with information.  That doesn't mean I don't like to or won't write any other paper; it's simply the style I prefer.  I hope to practice, through this class, writing many types of papers so in the future I will be ready for whatever writing assignment is thrown my way.