Anything you do as a writer before you begin to draft is part of your prewriting process. Thinking, taking notes, making mind maps, drawing, free writing, and other similar tasks are some thing writers do as they prepare to write.
What do you find helpful in preparing yourself to write? Do you have any personal prewriting habits that have assisted you in getting your ideas onto the page? How do you make decisions about choosing which topic to write about? Share your insights in the “comments” section.
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackIt starts with thoughts that keep coming back again and again. I know that I have to write about something when I cannot stop thinking about it. Once I have decided that I must write, I think some more. I think in the shower and when I am driving my car. Then I may strike up a conversation with a colleague or (God bless him) my husband. This talking about the thing helps me to process what I really want to say. When I finally sit down to write, I usually end up making a little list of key words that will prompt me later. These words are reminders about events, people, feelings, and ideas that I want to make sure to include somewhere in the writing. I often find myself going back to that list when I feel stuck and adding to it as I come up with other things in the midst of writing.
An extended metaphor, albeit a rather disgusting one, is what comes to mind for my prewriting. But before I get to it, let me say that prewriting is the very, very best thing about writing. It’s what you do to avoid actually writing. The procrastinator’s best friend–that’s prewriting.
Okay, so on to the metaphor. You’ve had that awful, sickening feeling in the pit of your stomach before, right? The one that tells you that there’s something going on that isn’t normal? The slight twinge that turns into slow flip-flops and ultimately spirals your innards around so much that you know the only remedy is a sprint for the nearest porcelain receptacle? Yes, I equate my prewriting with getting the flu.
It starts innocently enough, with the seed of an idea stirring in my head. I walk around with it for a long time, trying to simply let it be, attempting to believe that it will go away if I ignore it. But it continues to pester. In fact, it gets more and more intrusive, the more I try to leave it alone. Eventually, despite my best efforts to contain it, it simply reaches the point where, whether I want it to or not, it’s going to come out. I wish I had more control of it, but there are some things that can’t be rushed (and others that can’t be restrained).
It’s not really as unpleasant as getting the flu, either. But the sort of incubation that happens seems, in my process, to be on autopilot, the same as a flu bug’s progression through one’s gullet. And it’s not like I’ve finally figured out everything when the vomiting of words commences, either. But I do know when it’s time to start writing, and I guess that’s something.
I need time to mull before I write. “Mulling” is a key component of my prewrite process. (It also gives me a good excuse to procrastinate.) These are some of my favorite mulling activities: taking a walk, staring out the window while drinking coffee, washing dishes,taking a shower, listening to music. I sometimes have to ponder something for weeks–even years for certain pieces.
Another prewrite acitvity that works well for me is to read or listen to other people’s writing. It often really inspires.
I also do freewriting. Oh…I thought about this while I was writing about editing. It’s at this stage of the process that I decide what language I should use for the poem, english or spanish or both. Actually, that’s not accurate. The poem comes
to me in the language that it needs to be in. It speaks to me.
Prewriting either by hand or with a keyboard begins the same. I scatter points upon my page in no necessary order: words, phrases, quotes, and drawings are seeds, incubated by my attention which roves evenly over them. I might reposition them as I see relationships between the first sentence sproutlings, curling out to each other, weaving together. From disparate, simultaneous points, a draft is gathered, as a constellation.
Another method, which might be very rigid for some, is to not scatter seed-ideas everywhere, rather to spill a moving list of words or phrases which give me my bearings heading next. This experience of sensing where the words are positioning my next movement from one idea to another is analogized by monkey bars or stones across a river.
As far as I can remember, I’ve loved maps. All kinds of maps – road maps, topo maps, celestial maps – and I like to start writing for many types of writing by creating my own map for it. I start every school year by drawing a visual representation of the major curricular themes & standards I’ll be responsible for that year, and I often used this method to study.\
Sometimes these take the form of words, sometimes cartoons or even colors – I usually do this on paper, but sand works well, as does the dust on the back of the car….
I don’t always use the map directly when I start to write; rather, it organizes and orients my thinking to how the issues relate and interact and helps me know where I want to begin – and end.
I think and think and think, mostly when I’m riding my bike. Big surprise, right? I even think about ideas when I’m asleep. Every morning I wake up and can recall four or five dreams. Most of them are bizarro stuff, but usually at least one of my dreams helps me tackle something on paper. Then there are the wee morning hours of 2:30-4:00 when sleep dissipates and I am left in the quiet of my house, alone with my thoughts. On cool summer mornings like these, I take my laptop and a book out into my backyard. I settle in, the morning cool on my skin, and wade into words.
Pre-writing is something I do in my head. I moll stuff over in my head over and over and over. I have all kinds of mental preparation that I put in to my writing, but it’s almost never on the page. Maybe this is why I never seems to get enough sleep because it’s these quiet times (like going to sleep), where I really contemplate and think about my writing. I think that I have internalized many of the processes that we teach students in terms of pre-writing. My head is always so full of thoughts about topics. I think through the format, how I am going to start and end, the evidence I plan to use. Despite all the pre-thinking I do, it is never perfect, never free of errors, never as smooth as I need it to be; so I always have to rethink, and think again.
When I am preparing to write I try to think about the topic. Sometimes an idea pops into my mind and I write based on that idea. It is quite common that as I write my focus changes and the paper will take a new direction. I think the most important prewriting habit is just starting to write even if I am not sure what I want to say I just write and different ideas come to me. Sometimes I have too many ideas and have a hard time getting them all onto paper. When this happens I write as long as I can with one idea and as soon as that idea runs dry I move on to the next one.