Writer's Profile

            When writing, I generally begin with an outline.  My writing process begins with making a broad list of the overview of subjects that I will be writing about.  Under each subject, or category, I come up with two or three subcategories or examples or ideas (depending on the assignment) to support each subject.  If I can’t come up with enough support for a subject or topic, then I throw it out.  The ones that I am left with are the ones that I have solid evidence to support then when I begin to write.  Once I have an outline of what I am going to write, I just start writing.  It may not be in the right order or as specific as it needs to be but I try to just get all of my ideas and support out on the paper.  Once I have a first draft, I read through it and see if the order of things needs to be changed, if I need to add or remove some sentences based on how well they fit within the writing.  Next, I read for grammar and sentence structure.  Editing is very important to me and I generally do a lot more editing than revision.  In all of my writing, no matter how casual, I put it upon myself to make sure that I use correct grammar and English.  Once I am done making corrections, I read it once more to make sure that everything works together nicely and that I am satisfied with the level of work that I produced.  I think this process works for me very nicely.  It gives me somewhere to start with and somewhere to go and a procedure to follow along the way.  The most challenging part for me is filling in the information from the outline to the full writing.  I have trouble in my writing connecting all of the parts of my paper so that they function as a whole. For example, sometimes I lose sight of the fact that I have to tie everything back to my thesis in the beginning in order for the paper to argue whatever its purpose is.  Otherwise, the writing hasn’t accomplished anything.