Week 1

The Writing Process

2

1 Prewriting
3

 A writing project starts long before you put words on paper or on a

computer.
 Anything you do before you sit down to write your first draft is
prewriting.
 In prewriting stage you will mostly engage in searching and reading
for information and evidence as well as materials and sources.
 You will also engage in thinking about the issue you are going to
write about.
 At this stage you need to make an attempt to address the following
questions.
4  What materials and sources are relevant for your writing? You need to
identify these sources and read them in thorough.
 Whom you need to talk to?
 How to organize materials and sources?
 How to collect them… etcetera?
 In general, this stage is a time for preparation in which you mostly engage in
reading materials and sources until you identify the area you are going to
write about and capture its essence.
 This preparation stage will give you the confidence to begin writing a first
draft.
5
 A prewriting stage is where you are going to engage in several important activities,
including: reading a lot, identifying a purpose, locating authorities, and taking
notes.

 These crucial activities, accomplished successfully, will eventually lead you to your
area and topic, you are going to research and write about, as well as the purposes
and rationales.

 Though these preparatory activities are crucial, you will be tempted to stay too long
at this stage.
6
 Many students want to stay too long at this stage saying that they need to prepare a
lot before they finally decide to sit down to write the draft or before they ‘apply ass
to the chair’.
 Dr. Silvia (2007), in her book How to Write A Lot: a Practical Guide to Academic
Writing, interestingly summarized the excuses that deter scholars and writers from
writing.
 One is ‘’ I need to read more article before I begin writing’’. I call this ‘need to do
more syndromes’.
 The other common excuse, “I write when I feel like it’’. This, I call it, ‘right time
syndrome’. These syndromes, she advises, are barriers of writing.
7
 You don’t have to know everything for preparing a draft. You simply have to
begin preparing a draft with some amount of reading and know that you will
continue reading back and forth until you get done with your writing project.
 You need to resist the urge that you have to read everything for writing a
draft.
 This temptation will hold you keep in the prewriting stage and the more you
stay in this stage the more you build tension upon yourself, which makes it
increasingly difficult that bogs you down to begin your writing.
8  The other temptation/qorumsa that keeps you stuck in the prewriting stage is
waiting the right time to feel right to begin to write.
 Right feelings and right time may work for some people and could lead to great
writing works—but it is not always the case (especially in academic writing).

 Many prolific writers however do not depend on feeling and timing—rather they
rely on schedule, dead line and commitment.

 Note that you cannot accomplish something significant especially in academic

writing only if you write when you feel like it.
9  In general, it is imperative/dirqama to go through some level of reading to
grasp the issue and the current debate (if it is a research paper).

 However, it is also imperative not to stay too long on reading and

prewriting stage.

 The more you stay in the prewriting zone, the harder it gets to begin the
drafting stage— which is the first significant effort in your writing project.

 Note that reading will not only last at the prewriting stage it will continue
up until you complete your writing project.
10
11

2 Drafting
12  Drafting is the second and one of the most significant stages in the
writing process.
 It is your first attempt to ink your ideas on paper or use a keyboard to
put your words on the screen.
 These ideas are largely to be a product of your thinking and analysis
on the data and information you collect at the prewriting stage.
 A number of techniques can be used to effectively begin drafting.
 You can begin drafting using techniques such as: outlining and free
writing or mix of both techniques.
13  After you read and collect information on the issue you are going to write, you
may decide on major ideas and topics you will incorporate as well as on how to
organize and structure them (this initial organization is very likely to be loose and
therefore can be changed as you go through your writing).
 And based on these initial clues you can then develop an outline—an organized
list of topics and sub topics, even topic sentences and major points to be
incorporated within. And then begin writing a draft as per this outline. However, if
new topic emerges in the middle of your drafting (which is very likely to occur),
you better incorporate them.
 Outlines shall not be rigid; they have to be flexible, and can go through several
changes across the process of writing.
14  The writing process is not like building a house. In order to build a house, first you need to
produce a blueprint which plans the nature of the building, the size of its colons, the length
of each room, and the distance between rooms.
 In short, a blue print tells every detail of the building. In fact, it is the exact same replica of
an actual building.
 However, the writing process is not a straight linear move from plan to execution as
many of the ideas pillar to the final text emerges in the process of writing.
 Therefore, generally speaking, writing cannot be lead by a blueprint, a detail plan and
outline—it is better to have a very rough outline which you will change and amend
constantly as you begin the process of writing.
 You can also begin writing a draft using free writing.
15
 To free write is to write down freely without assessing the value of ideas that comes forth
from your head. It is also writing every bits of idea exhaustively and without a pause on an
issue.
 Free writing could take a couple of minutes, half an hour, or even a couple of hours.
 One of the challenges of free writing is to be overly judgmental over the ideas and issues
and so you can get easily discouraged and get distracted and back out early without
exhausting your ideas and thoughts.
 And therefore, it could be helpful to set some minimum amount of time limit for each free
writing attempt and try not to quit the attempt until you fulfill the time period—even if you
feel that you are repeating stuffs.
16

 And if you are able to pass your time limit, good, continue to free
write until you run out of thoughts.
 When you free write you don’t rest until you write everything you
think about an issue.
 When you free write you don’t revise, you don’t edit, you don’t assess
—you only write down what you think in a form that comes natural
regardless of rhetoric/dubbii afaanii.
 And finally you will have a draft which you could work on.
17
 But, here is a caveat/of eeggannoo—more often than not you get tempted
to feel what you write is worthless and there is nothing important to come out
especially at an early stage of writing such as drafting.
 Godwin in his famous article the watchers at the gate explains how a writer
gets overcritical at the drafting stage.
 He advised to free write and pour/dhangalaasaa out our ideas in to paper—
even if those ideas seem irrelevant in the beginning.
18  He wrote “In isolation an idea may be quite insignificant, and venturesome in the
extreme, but it may acquire importance from an idea which follows it…”
 The watchers are —the tendency or feeling being overcritical over the worthy and
significance of every single word and sentence to be written.
 And if we put on our watchers when we draft, they keep out many of the ideas that
could be significant, will block our imagination, and will bog down our drafting
pace/saffisa.
 At the stage of drafting, it is imperative to get rid of your watchers at the gate, and
allow every single idea to come in to the gate without any discrimination.
 These two techniques of drafting—outlining and free writing—are not exclusive/kan
adda ta’e miti. In fact, we often apply a mix of both outlining and free writing tools.
19  In academic writing, after reading and collecting information and evidence,
you will likely identify a group of issues and themes which leads you to
develop an outline.
 And based on those outlines you begin to free write about the specific issues
and topics you identified in your outline.
 In conclusion, making a first draft is big step forward in your writing project.
 It is imperative to outline and free write when drafting.
 But at this writing stage, don’t be critical, rather be very passionate/fedhii
guddaaa qabaachuu and pour out on paper everything that comes of off your
head.
20
21

3 Rewriting
22
 Preparing a first draft (or a discovery draft as Murray would like to call it) is
the first important move that enables you to extract significant thoughts and
ideas, discoveries.
 But, preparing a first draft is also not big deal, which requires significant
change and improvement it in terms of both content and form through
rewriting.
 Rewriting (or revising) is to rewrite (to revise) and make changes on a first
draft.
23
 Prof. Murray rightly stated that writing, in its true sense as the most
thoughtful, critical, and creative process, begins at the rewriting.
 Zinisser also urged— it is not writing, it is rewriting that determine your
win or lose of the game.
 It is through rewriting again and again that you arrive at what you want
to say.
 It is in the process of rewriting that new meanings will emerge, valid
arguments will be fortified, and feeble ones will be chipped away.
24  In short, rewriting is an attempt to make new discoveries in terms of thoughts ideas
standing on your first draft, as well as to inculcate important change on the things you put
in your first draft.
 Therefore, the first draft could be so messy waiting to be cleaned in the process of
rewriting; however, it could also be a springboard (or a mining [or mineral] field) upon
which new discoveries will be made by rewriting.

 When you begin to mine your ‘shitty first draft’, when you encounter the first couple of
pages of your first draft, you will see that your writing was full of flaws, absence of
significant ideas and supporting details, poor organization, numerous grammar and syntax
problem… and then you will be tempted to think that what you wrote is a garbage, nothing
important in it, and quit.
25
 You have to assume a critical mindset contrast to the one you had while drafting.
 At the rewriting stage, be very critical of everything you wrote on your ‘shitty first
draft’.
 In crafting your first draft, you need to act as one lazy door keeper ushering in all
guests coming in to your home without proper check up and investigation.
 But in the rewriting stage, you will discriminate guests by examining their significance
and worthy as to whether they should deserve to stay longer in your hospitality or leave
your home early— you only allow to stay those very important (VIP) guests of yours.
 In rewriting, there are several activities you need to carry out.
 The most key and common includes: addition, subtraction, and reorganization.
26

Addition
 It is very likely that a first draft lacks several important information's.
 In order to supply your first draft with ideas and information, you will likely add
several texts.
 At the early stage of rewriting, it is important that you focus on content and
substance.
 What sort of ideas should be inculcated/facaafame to reinforce your writing?
 And your job will be supplying lots of ideas and information and this will
increase the size of your draft dramatically.
  To make important additions in your first draft, find out what is missing in your draft, and
27
make sure it is included.
 If you find a leap in reasoning among your sentences, write the missing sentence and position
it in the appropriate place; if you come across with a weak claim or argument, support it with
evidence.
 One of the chief sources of addition is making a link between ideas and thoughts and in the
process, it is possible that there exist a possibility of the emergence of new dimensions, and
therefore pursue those dimensions and incorporate them in your draft.
 Note that readers read to get information and therefore your writing has to provide abundance
of interesting information (or facts and evidence) for your claims and arguments.
 Therefore, you need to make sure that in your early rewriting attempts, your focus should be
to substantiate your writing by additional explanation, description, information, and evidence.
28

Subtraction
 As much as you have to add (when you rewrite), you have to cut out.
 Cutting out is better to be carried out in the later stage of rewriting after you develop
your draft to a significant size.
 A lot of stuff which seemed important in your first draft, may become irrelevant in the
process of rewriting, therefore, you will have no choice but to disavow/ganuu them.
 Do not allow every word or any text (it even could be a section) to survive the rewriting
if it fails to contribute to meaning and enrich your text.
 Most students don’t like to drop a dead wood text out of their draft, they think it is
precious— and by not cutting out what is unnecessary in their draft, will risk their entire
work.
29
Reorganization
 To put order in your draft, is another important jobs you do in
rewriting.
 It is to reexamine the order of your thoughts, your paragraphs, and
sections.
 If you find wrong sequences among your paragraph, re order them in
the most rational way so that a reader can easily follow the
threads/dhaamsa of the story.
 If you feel that a section comes too early, you may reconsider to re
position it in the middle or at the end of your text.
30
 When you analyze your text and it feels that it doesn’t seem natural, study the nature of the issue,
decide
 what you want to communicate, and reorganize your text accordingly—if you write about an ordinary
day of some person, for instance, begin how he/she wakes up, don’t start in the middle of the day.
 Note that when you rewrite, you do addition, subtraction and reorganizations— simultaneously, when
you cut a text, you may add another instead; when adding, you may create new link with the existing
text; and when reorganize, you will see a new idea emerge which leads to adding new text.
 These activities are difficult to be accomplished in a straightforward linear and step by step process—
you will go back and forth from one activity to the other, several times.
 However, it is imperative to focus on addition in your early rewriting attempts, subtraction and
organization in your later rewriting endeavors/carraaqqii gochuu.
31

 How much rewriting is enough? And why?

32  According to Murray (2002), the famous writer Anthony Bogus rewrite his first draft at least 20
times; there also authors who rewrite up to 150 times.
 I would say rewrite as much you can.
 Be sure that the time and effort you put in to rewriting will pay since you can make additional
improvement every time you rewrite, meaning the more you rewrite, the more you add good staff
into your text, the more you make it connected, clean, neat, organized, and interesting.
 You may stop rewriting when you reach a point where you are no more able to provide new
improvements in your text.
 As soon as you finish rewriting, better to show your text to someone who can give you a feedback.
 Based on the feedback you can further rewrite and improve your work.
 In general, rewriting is when you actually begin to develop your text, do it as effective as you can
and as much as you can.
33

 But, watch for overwriting. Overwriting happens when the writing, its
language and syntax dominates the message and ideas to be
communicated.
 In academic writing, the idea and message you write about should
occupy a central position. And therefore overwriting will undermine
the ideas—but this doesn’t mean that poor writing is tolerated. It
doesn’t.
34

4 Editing
35
 You enter in to this final stage after you carry out rewriting and revision as many
times as possible until you feel that you said what you need to say in a way that
you want to say it.
 You surely know that you should start editing when you run out of ideas and you
start to repeat yourself. At this point you should take a time before you begin your
editing.
 In this stage, your focus is to make your writing to comply with standards of
language—grammar, usage, punctuation, and word choice—to make it more
readable and communicative.
 If you do not understand these conventions and don’t know how to use them in
your writing, you simply should increase your understanding and skill in applying
these tools in your writing.
36  After all you are doomed to fail if you have great ideas and don’t know how
to communicate to your audience using Standard English.
 In the editing stage, your first job has to be to identify and locate clutters
(dead woods) in your writing, and cut them out since these clutters will block
your meaning to communicate with your audience.
 Try also to make your sentences and paragraphs as simple and clear as
possible, here also avoid difficult words beyond the comprehension of your
audience.
 Then look for wrong grammar and punctuation usage, it is highly likely that
you (like many prolific writers) make a lot of grammatical errors and correct
them.
37

 Do this as much as you can and as creative as you can and be dead sure that if
your writing has committed a serious bridge of grammar and convention,
readers will avoid your paper within few seconds, and publishers will send you
a rejection paper saying that they are not interested in your paper.
 To enhance your editing (as well as writing skill) heed the advice of Stunk and
White, authors of one of the greatest book on writing, The Elements of Style
and apply its principles—“omit needless words”, “use the active voice” “one
paragraph to each topic”, “put statements in a positive form”, “in summaries,
keep to one tense”, and “do not join independent closes by a comma”.
38

2 3
1 Rewritin 4
Prewriting Drafting Editing
g
39

Class Assignment

Select any topic and write a draft