My Writing Process

Many people consider writing a process. There are even different "archetypes" for people of different writing processes. This would make sense if one identifies themselves as any of the first three described: a "heavy planner", "heavy reviser", or a "sequential composer". However, if one is in the final category, like myself, he/she understands that writing is not a process and gets a bit of a laugh at the thought of planning out written work.

I am the procrastinator-type writer but I don't think that gives me enough credit. I don't know about other procrastinators, but for me, good ideas and planning come the day before an assignment is due. I put in just as much planning as sequential writers with the quality of a heavy planner in a fraction of the time. So really, I am the superior mix of procrastinator, sequential, and heavy-planning writers. Sorry heavy revisers, but you're not needed for the most efficient form of the writing process.

birgerking. "Procrastination Flowchart" 7/31/11 via flickr. Attribution 2.0 Generic

My way of the writing process has worked out really well for me. As stated before, I save time at zero expense to quality. There's a peace to knowing I will do an assignment the day before it's due. It is expected that that adds stress to the procrastinator's life, but I've found quite the contrary. Real procrastinators resonate with this fact: if I'm not going to do it, then I'm not going to worry about it.

Unfortunately, procrastination does have a weakness. If one isn't born with the ability to function at 110% under the pressure of weeks and weeks piled on to a few hours, then procrastination will make the essay not a piece of trash, but rather an entire landfill of garbage.

There's rumor that procrastination undeniably results in bad work, but that's not true. it is just a trend and should be treated as such; it's just a coincidence.

Teachers always disrespect the power of procrastination. They always say that I should try a new way of doing the writing process. I have tried all of them but my grades are always the same. The writing is considerably longer, but if the grade doesn't improve, then it's not worth the time and effort.


Reflection:

I read Brandon and Dylan's blogs, both have writing processes that I can relate to. From Brandon's blog, I learned that I undervalue the revision stage of the writing process. As he stated, "ego has no place in writing" and I need to look at my paper several times over and critically evaluate it to try to improve it. I learned that I need to relax and not overthink the writing process from Dylan's blog. Not procrastinating would really help that aspect and I will try not to do so in the future.