MY Writing Process

Stowe, Rennett. "Tapping a Pencil" 10/30/2008 via Flickr. Public Domain

1. What type of writer do you consider yourself to be?

As terrible as it may sound and unpleasant to hear to many honors students, I consider myself to be within the category of procrastinators when it comes to writing. This type of writing, although looked down upon, can be very effective and beneficial for those who thrive in such a scenario. I consider myself to be a procrastinating writer because I usually sit down and write an entire paper in that one sitting rather than spacing out my writing, a tactic that I feel benefits me greatly.

2. Does your writing process include several of the above approaches? If so, which ones?

My writing includes parts of each of the above approaches to a lesser degree. The one that has the biggest presence in my writing process is heavy planners. Although I stated that my main type of writing is procrastination, I utilize heavy planning before I begin the actual writing so when I get to writing I can breeze through the entire paper in one sitting rather than spacing out my writing time of a week or so. To me, heavy planning almost acts as a form of procrastination because to procrastinate the actual writing, I focus on heavy planning and deciding what I am going to write about and say in my paper.

3. Does your writing process seem to be successful? What are the strengths and weaknesses of your approach?

This writing process seems to be very successful to me. I see it as a strength first and foremost rather than a weakness as many perceive. A strength of procrastination is that usually it brings more stress to me or whomever is writing a paper. Stress is amazing when writing a paper or grinding homework because stress is not bad. Stress is one of the best motivators and my body reacts to stress by increasing productivity and it provides the needed drive to write a quality paper in a short amount of time. Some weaknesses of procrastinating is the fact that usually you are under the pressure of time, which can lead to minor mistakes in conventions if not careful. Another disadvantage of procrastination writing style is that it can be much more difficult to stay organized and focused in the writing if proper care and attention to detail is not taken before writing has begun.

4. Do you think it might be beneficial for you to try a different approach? Why or why not?

Yes, I do think that it may be beneficial for me to try a different writing approach. Rather than abandon my previous writing approach that has worked time and time again, I would adopt a new writing approach and change the way I "procrastinate". The one approach I would like to add to my writing process would be heavy revisers. I feel that heavy revising of my papers rather than the usual revising that occurs on my papers could be very beneficial to my works due to the fact that I will find many things that can be changed in order to better the work as a whole. Another approach that may be beneficial to try is sequential composers because then rather than procrastinating I can focus on the work as a whole such as the planning, drafting, and revising to make a complete work with little to no errors and proper organization of ideas.