I noticed after reading many of the blog posts that a lot of us talk about our methods for writing essays so I thought I’d share some of my writing experience.
When we first learn to write essays, we were always told to brainstorm ideas of what we want to write about, usually drawing one of those diagrams that I don’t really remember the name of. We usually write out our thesis in the middle circle and then from there, we add our “concrete details” and our analysis to it. So because I was taught this way, this was how I would start my essays; formulate a thesis then start from there. But soon, I found out that sometimes my thesis is flawed and isn’t even supported enough by the text. When that happens, I usually have to change my thesis and pretty much rewrite and rethink my whole paper. Besides doing this, I jot down phrases and words that might be appropriate for my paper so that I don’t have to go look in a thesaurus for other words. I also keep a list of transitions that I can use to help my paper flow.
That was my first method, but after a while, I got tired of rewriting pretty much my whole essay and decided to change my strategy. I would start my paper with coming up with textual evidence that relates to my topic and then formulating my thesis based on the evidence I find. This way, I don’t have to worry about my argument not being backed up by the text. But this limits my writing a little because I may ignore the rest of the text. This worked for the papers I had to write during high school but now, I’m using a combination of the two methods. First, I read the prompt and get a general idea of what I might want to talk about in my paper and look for evidence from there. Second, I write (with a pencil, I find that I’m more efficient when I actually write down things rather than just staring blankly at that the blinking cursor on my computer screen) a general outline of my essay including my thesis and the textual evidence I find and jotting down phrases and words that pop up in my mind on the side. Then I actually type/write my essay and hope that everything works well. If it doesn’t, then I just continue with my essay and fix the rest later.
I guess I will keep using this method until I find a better one.
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3 comments:
I'm surprised that you find it more efficient to write with a pencil for your fisrt draft. I would imagine that this method would involve more work for the writer, and thus pull attention away from ideas and thoughts. But then again, I am one of those who stare at the blinking cursor :). Maybe I should try your way
I know, that is so amazing that you find it more efficient to write with a pencil on a piece of paper because I personally hate writing on paper just because if I make a mistake then I can't just hit backspace (and erasers get pretty messy). But not only that, I personally find typing on a computer easier because it tells me whenever I made a grammatical mistake like misspelling grammatical (ya I just corrected that).
But I do agree with Raynard about the idea that writing pulls attention away from ideas and thoughts. Then again, going back to a previous word with a red squiggly line under it and fixing it does also cause some distraction as well. So which method would be more efficient to use? That is up to the reader to decide.
I, too, was surprised that you prefer to write with pencil and paper. However, now that the point comes up, I cant help but think that those that prefer to use the computer (like me) are always pressured to write faster or better (maybe?) because it seems easier. I think that pressure sometimes takes away from our thoughts and ideas, as people have mentioned with the process of writing with pen and paper. Interesting...it would be an interesting experiment to try out.
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