Starting the Writing Process

Invention: Starting the Writing Process Writing takes time

Find out when is the assignment due and devise a plan of action. This may seem obvious and irrelevant to the writing process, but it's not. Writing is a process, not merely a product. Even the best professional writers don't just sit down at a computer, write, and call it a day. The quality of your writing will reflect the time and forethought you put into the assignment. Plan ahead for the assignment by doing pre-writing: this will allow you to be more productive and organized when you sit down to write. Also, schedule several blocks of time to devote to your writing; then, you can walk away from it for a while and come back later to make changes and revisions with a fresh mind.

Use the rhetorical elements as a guide to think through your writing

Thinking about your assignment in terms of the rhetorical situation can help guide you in the beginning of the writing process. Topic, audience, genre, style, opportunity, research, the writer, and purpose are just a few elements that make up the rhetorical situation.

Topic and audience are often very intertwined and work to inform each other. Start with a broad view of your topic such as skateboarding, pollution, or the novel Jane Eyre and then try to focus or refine your topic into a concise thesis statement by thinking about your audience. Here are some questions you can ask yourself about audience:

• Who is the audience for your writing?

• Do you think your audience is interested in the topic? Why or why not?

• Why should your audience be interested in this topic?

• What does your audience already know about this topic?

• What does your audience need to know about this topic?

• What experiences has your audience had that would influence them on this topic?

• What do you hope the audience will gain from your text?

For example, imagine that your broad topic is dorm food. Who is your audience? You could be writing to current students, prospective students, parents of students, university administrators, or nutrition experts among others. Each of these groups would have different experiences with and interests in the topic of dorm food. While students might be more concerned with the taste of the food or the hours food is available parents might be more concerned with the price.

You can also think about opportunity as a way to refine or focus your topic by asking yourself what current events make your topic relevant at this moment. For example, you could connect the nutritional value of dorm food to the current debate about the obesity epidemic or you could connect the price value of dorm food to the rising cost of a college education overall.

Keep in mind the purpose of the writing assignment.

Writing can have many different purposes. Here are just a few examples:

• Summarizing: Presenting the main points or essence of another text in a condensed form

• Arguing/Persuading: Expressing a viewpoint on an issue or topic in an effort to convince others that your viewpoint is correct

• Narrating: Telling a story or giving an account of events

• Evaluating: Examining something in order to determine its value or worth based on a set of criteria.

• Analyzing: Breaking a topic down into its component parts in order to examine the relationships between the parts.

• Responding: Writing that is in a direct dialogue with another text.

• Examining/Investigating: Systematically questioning a topic to discover or uncover facts that are not widely known or accepted, in a way that strives to be as neutral and objective as possible.

• Observing: Helping the reader see and understand a person, place, object, image or event that you have directly watched or experienced through detailed sensory descriptions.

You could be observing your dorm cafeteria to see what types of food students are actually eating, you could be evaluating the quality of the food based on freshness and quantity, or you could be narrating a story about how you gained fifteen pounds your first year at college.

You may need to use several of these writing strategies within your paper. For example you could summarize federal nutrition guidelines, evaluate whether the food being served at the dorm fits those guidelines, and then argue that changes should be made in the menus to better fit those guidelines.

Pre-writing strategies

Once you have thesis statement just start writing! Don't feel constrained by format issues. Don't worry about spelling, grammar, or writing in complete sentences. Brainstorm and write down everything you can think of that might relate to the thesis and then reread and evaluate the ideas you generated. It's easier to cut out bad ideas than to only think of good ones. Once you have a handful of useful ways to approach thesis you can use a basic outline structure to begin to think about organization. Remember to be flexible; this is just a way to get you writing. If better ideas occur to you as you're writing, don't be afraid to refine your original ideas.

CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING:

1. Why do you have to make a plan of action before starting the writing process?

2. Is the quality of writing connected with the time of writing?

3. What helps to begin the writing?

4. How can you choose the topic of writing?

5. How can you find the audience you are writing for?

6. What are the purposes of writing?

7. Which purposes of writing are the most important and why?

8. Do you always have to think about spelling in the writing process or only on certain stages?

9. Do you have to make an outline before writing?

10. If you have a better idea after your writing what do you do?

COMPLETE THE SENTENCES FROM THE TEXT:

1. Find out when is the assignment…

2. Writing is a process, not…

3. Plan ahead for…

4. Schedule several blocks of …

5. Start with a broad view of …

6. Keep in mind the purpose …

7. You may need to use several of …

8. Don’t feel constrained …

9. Don’t worry about …

10. Reread and evaluate …

11. Brainstorm and write down everything …

12. It’s easier to cut down …

13. You can use a basic structure outline to …

14. Remember to be …

Don’t be afraid …

EXERCISES

Ex.1 Choose the correct spelling of each word. 1. hemorrhage, hemmorhage 2. embarrass, embarass 3. consensus, concensus 4. drunkeness, drunkenness 5. sheriff, sherriff 6. privilege, privelege 7. fraudulant, fraudulent 8. restauranteur, restaurateur 9. accomodate, accommodate 10. liquefy, liquify 11. committment, commitment 12. harass, harrass 13. prerogative, perogative 14. alright, all right 15. inoculate, innoculate 16. seize, sieze 17. ecstasy, ecstacy 18. bellweather, bellwether 19. Caribbean, Carribean 20. parallel, paralell 21. weird, wierd 22. fairwell, farewell 23. adrress, address 24. achieve, acheive 25. manageable, managable

Ex.2 Identify these acronyms:

1. NATO 2. NASA 3. ATM 4. NOW 5. OPEC 6. RAM 7. WTO

Ex 3 Edit these sentences, keeping in mind spelling, punctuation, grammar, style, word usage and wordiness, as well as issues of fairness and libel.

1. I don’t know how to even begin editing these sentences.

2. The general concensus of opinion was that the house was the most unique in its  class.

3. Lisa has a myriad of books, but never seems to take the time to read then.

4. The asisstant who ordinarily is highly efficient, was all thumbs in todays  experiment.

5. Having evaluated the situation and the impact of the new regulations upon the    state’s current educational system, it is obvious that the voters must convince the legislature in Peoria to adopt reforms.

6. Volkswagon is only having trouble with one of there 1983 models.

7. The copy editor’s will meet today.

8. The two bank robbery suspects fled and have not been caught.

9. When only a small boy, my father took me with him to Denver.

10. A new graduate course in comunications is being introduced this semmester.

11. He wanted to know if the criteria was valid.

12. Seven famous astronauts returned to earth today.

13. Swinging from the utility poll, they saw the remnant of a kit’s tale and some tattered paper.

14. I feel nauseous when I think of the momento I lost.

15. Rudolph Nuryev had danced for years before succumbing to the urge to direct.

16. Floodwaters totaly destroyed the town despite the fact that their was a floodwall completely surrounding it.

17. She was diagnosed with cancer in June.

18. It looks like Juston will be hung for murder despite his appealing to the governor.

19. There were three people in the car when it collided with a tree, but none were injured.

20. Despite averse wether conditions, the first annual cookout begins Sunday night at 7 p.m.

Ex.4 Write a two-line, 13- to 16-count headline.

        WASHINGTON — The TV industry abruptly broke off negotiations Thursday on strengthening five-month-old program ratings after Vice President Al Gore endorsed labeling shows for violent content.         Accusing Gore of “unwarranted intervention in the process,” the major broadcasting, cable and motion picture trade associations took the action as the industry inched closer to adding codes for violence, sex and crude language.         Earlier in the day, breaking the administration’s silence on possible changes in the ratings that took effect Jan. 1, Gore declared, “We need a ‘V’ to tell us when our youngest children could be exposed to violence.”