Writers, pressured by deadlines and the sheer need to get something down, tend to think of writing as a product. But, the key to good writing is to consider it a process -- a creative process that can be explored and utilized to create some amazing, be it a research paper or a short story.
There are three steps to the writing process:
1.) Pre-writing Activities: These include brainstorming, list-making, organizational mapping, discussing ideas, drawing characters and places, and free writing. I think free writing seems like it would be an exceptionally helpful thing to do. Just writing continually, without considerations of grammar or syntax.
2.) Writing/Drafting Activities: The actual writing process, where you sit down and write something. Basically, this is where a place like YWS kicks into gear, because Writer's Workshop and Peer Review is part of this, and also very important. Peer Review helps bring out concepts and relationships within the writing process. Explore your own concepts, and have others explore them with you.
3.) Post-Writing: After writing the whole story or essay or what have you, it's time to look at what you've written and decide what to do with it. This is where editing and revision comes into play (there should be some post-writing activities conducted before posting on YWS -- this is due to the writing process being recursive. I will address this further later). Evaluation comes into play. Progress is important with writing, obviously, and as a young writer it's important to point out areas of progress and areas that need progression. Also, publication is considered a post-writing activity. What is the audience of your piece? Where can you submit it? Publication is always worth a try, be it TeenInk or a newsletter.
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The Pre-writing process and the Writing process deal with higher order concerns, which include the focus of the piece, the organization, clarity, and direction. You are not even supposed to be THINKING about grammar at those points, because focusing too much on grammar will prevent your ideas from flowing out onto the paper effectively.
Lower order concerns, those being grammar, syntax and mechanics, should be addressed only in the post-writing process (unless some of the grammar and mechanics are so grave and deadly to the piece that they must be addressed earlier). This is so due to the fact that it is easiest to address grammar in retrospect to the piece -- fixing areas that you missed, spell-checking yourself, and rearranging sentences. Puzzling too much over grammar will prevent ideas in your head from effectively reaching the page when explored in earlier stages of writing.
Grammar, therefore, is very important for all writers, but without actually writing there would be no grammar to fuss over. So write first.
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So, earlier on, I said the writing process was recursive in nature. Basically, an individual can jump around from one writing process step to another. For example, they can be in the post-writing stage, editing grammar, and then suddenly in rereading they feel like they're lacking the exploration of a certain concept -- so they return to the pre-writing stage!
As writers, we're allowed to hop around throughout all the steps of writing. Don't feel like you can't go back and brainstorm after writing the piece!
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Short and concise, and something I'll have to look back on from time to time. I almost missed this, but I'm glad it finally caught my eye.
