Mullins posted the link about "Outlining in Reverse" as a suggested blog post and as a writer who both loves and detests prewriting I figured it might be interesting to read and then give thoughts on it.
My Experiences with Prewriting:
I hate prewriting. In elementary school we used to have to do it constantly before every thing that we wrote and then we were graded on it. As a 7-8 year old kid I hated this and thought it was stupid (okay maybe I just didnt want to do it and now that I'm older have formed an actual reason as to why I was opposed to it). We used to have starburst organizer that we would have to fill out these "starburst prewriting work sheets." I have no idea how to describe them, they basically had three sections: topic, details, and explanations (at least I think those are the three) and they where just annoying, theres no way to explain why without a visual of it (and a google search turned up nothing). We also had to do organizer sheets like the classic hamburger organizer and whatever this thing was as well as probably several others that I have repressed from my memory. But it was the fact that we were graded on them that irked me and even stupider was the fact that teachers would be like "Oh, well this is just for you and is a way to help you get your thoughts together" yet they'd grade the things and then tell me it wasnt good enough. How can you tell me my own thoughts that are helping me are in fact not good enough?
Because of my elementary fiasco with prewriting I think I have pushed away most ways of prewriting today and just write and see what happens. This is especially true when I write creatively, I will have an idea in my head and instead of planning it our I just write and see where it takes me. With academic writing, usually the only prewriting I do is may a quick outline on a scrap sheet of paper of what I need to talk about, usually just broad topics, and then make a few more quick notes of some specifics that would go with them. I write and then make minor changes afterwards.
Things From the Article:
The article was written by a writer that also doesnt prewrite, instead they write, getting all there thoughts on paper and then go back and make changes. I can relate to that so I liked the article and understood a lot of what they where saying and that is pretty much all that I was expecting to get out of it. Instead though it gave me a few ideas. Mostly about how to self edit. Like the author I suck at self editing and rely heavily on teachers and friends to give me advice on what to change. I will make minor changes, but what majorly needs to be changed is frequently hard for me to recognize. However the authors idea to turn it into a math equation seems extremely useful and is definitely something I plan to try. In this way I think that I will be able to make my pieces better. Their idea of "Outlining is reverse" or what I'll probably call "post-writing, pre-writing" is something that I'm excited to use and see if it will help benefit my writing in both academic and creative circumstances.
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