My Writing Process

As two enemy convoys approached each other, the Gatling guns begin to spin and the grenades are ready in hand. Bombs were blown, shells were empty, blood was spilt, but no one actually knew what happened. Each thought they had won but the entire battle field was an ambiguous cloud of smoke. Welcome to my writing.

1/2. First off, I believe I am a heavy reviser. My ideas come to me as I am writing my paper. I do not enjoy thinking about what I want to write about ahead of time. The reason for this is because most of my "grand" ideas come to me as I am writing. Planning ahead often makes me want to structure what I am saying and that has never proven to be successful. In fact, most of what I am writing in this post is being thought of as I type it. 

Revising is another great time for the exploration of my ideas. As I am reading, I find out what I was meaning to say and revise the structure in such a way that conveys that information. 

The only problem is that this is put off to the last minute (i.e. procrastination). As much as we would all love to get a head start on all of our projects, most of us would admit that we put them off until the last day. In fact, I am writing this very blog post the day before it is due. 

Not only am I a procrastinator in the timely sense, but also when I am writing a paper itself. I let ideas flow as I am writing my paper. I procrastinate my thoughts until I actually begin typing. I often find that I can't "brainstorm" until I am writing the paper. 

3. My writing is often a wild card. Sometimes my ideas happen to patch together nicely, but other times my writing goes from one idea to the next. Allow me to explain why that is.

As I had described earlier, my thoughts come to me as I write. I'll come up with an astonishing goal and then I just have to figure out how to get there. Once I have figured that out, I will begin with my first "step" in the process. I keep writing about this topic and then a great idea pops in to my head. I begin connecting the two topics and then another fantastic idea sneaks its way in to my thoughts. Before I know it, I don't even remember what I was talking about to start with. 

As one can see, this can lead to a very confused audience. But mind you, this is not always a bad thing. The reason is because most of my thoughts tend to be quite insightful. The only problem is that I have troubles communicating them in a way that my audience would understand. So, I start creating analogies that aren't in fact analogous at all.

If there was some way to pick out the parts of my writing that cohere together, I may actually compose something noteworthy.

Trevor, Jay. "Trippy Trevor" 11/30/2015 via flickr
Public Domain Dedication License 

4. I think it would be great to attempt new approaches to my writing. Much like the sequential composer, I believe it would be beneficial to constantly revise my essay. This is because I could catch myself before I went off on tangents and diverted the entire essay. Planning a little bit ahead could also help me organize my thoughts. This new approach may allow me to convey my ideas better and, dare I say, inspire.