Week 0: Thinking about writing as a process
- Aims: Familiarise yourself with the virtual learning environment and introduce yourself to the other participants
- Activity: Post a note letting us know you're online within the 'arrivals lounge'
- Activity: Fill in your Moodle profile so others can see who is posting
- Activity: Introduce yourself and your writing-in-progress by creating a google slide. Read other people's slides to get to know what others are currently working on. Use the 'comment' facility underneath the slides to leave comments for them. Just let us know if you have any trouble creating your own slide.
- Video: watch the short video by Kathy Greethurst talking about her own 'writing process'
The Writing Process
Writing can be conceived as a process. This process is distinct for each person. The process is affected by a person’s writing style, linguistic background, other commitments, and personality.
The four weeks of this course focus on a simple version of the writing process:
week 1: generating ideas and planning
week 2: drafting (in rough) and seeking feedback
week 3: revising, based upon feedback
week 4: editing and completion
However, this is not the only way you can break the process of producing a piece of writing into stages. There are other ways of conceptualising the main stages. Figure 1 shows one way of illustrating key stages of the writing process:
Figure 1. A recursive writing process.
Figure 1 shows that there is no clear beginning or end to the writing process! You can start almost anywhere, and the process is recursive, so you often feel like you’re just going round in circles!
In fact, you are making progress by spending time on each of the stages within this process. It is necessary to return to stages you tackled before, for instance, gathering more information on an issue. Although this feels frustrating, it is integral to the circular writing process.
It is a bit like a wheel going around. The process propels you forward to the finish, but when you are stuck within the midst of it you cannot see the end!
Figure 2 shows an alternative way of illustrating the writing process:
Figure 2. An alternative representation of the writing process.
In figure 2 the stages are given different labels, and each is given equal weighting. This alternative illustration of the writing process reminds us that everyone who writes experiences the process differently. Figure 2 shows an orderly process, but not all writers experience it like this! For instance, look at figure 3:
Figure 3. A non-linear writing process.
Figure 3 is useful because it reveals the messiness of writing. We do not usually proceed from one stage to another in an orderly fashion, which can create confusion and stress.
This course
We hope that this course will provide time for you to reflect on your own writing process, and get to know yourself more fully as a writer. The weeks of the course concentrate on different aspects of the writing process, but this is a background concern. The main thing we'd like you to do is progress your own writing project.
You may like to look at your diary between now and the start of July, and schedule writing sessions for yourself. Feel free to put these into your diary as a date (with yourself) to move through the stages of your writing project, towards completion.
