Writing is a PROCESS

I vaguely remember hearing my elementary school teachers saying that, "writing is a process." When I first learned this, I followed the steps that they laid out for me at the time, but as I went through school, it became harder and harder to abide by these steps. As I have found though, by following these steps, it makes the writing process faster and makes for a better paper.

Step 1: Prewriting. By using graphic organizers, it is an easy way to map out your ideas and topics. In school, I used to make my semantic maps that looked like clouds and from there I would link smaller clouds that related to one another.

Step 2: Drafting. Once you have your thoughts organized on a graphic orgnizer, the next step is to put those thoughts on paper. Once you do this, you can think moe about the content of your paper and what you are writing about.

Step 3: Revising. This is when you go back and look at your rough draft and make changes, such as adding or deleting sentences. You don't focus as much on grammatical errors, but on content and the ideas that make up your paper. A really good idea is to have others read through and give you advice on how to make it better.

Step 4: Editing. This is after you have gone through and revised your story, you go back and fix your conventions. Check your spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. You can also get others to go through and find and correct mistakes.

Step 5: Publish. This is the final step. Once you have created a wiriting piece, publish it! Frame it and put it on the wall. If it is a letter, then actually send or deliver it to the person who you wrote it to. Reward yourself for doing a great job!!