Pre-writing

In the past, my brainstorming for a paper started with me sitting down and grabbing a piece of paper. I write down all the possible ideas of what I could write about. Whether it is a good idea or a bad idea, I make sure to write them all down. I then initially decide which topics are worth writing about, whether they will draw in a reader or turn a reader away. When I have a good list going about topics I write sub topics that clarify and describe my main idea. I always want to write my paper about an idea that I know more about, so that I have more to write about. Topics that have little details get erased. When I finally have my sole topic of what I'm writing about, I start to do my first draft, I usually just blab. My teacher in high school taught me that if you cant think of a good way to start a paper you just start writing what comes to mind. Later on when you find a good beginning you can add it in and continue on. When I finish my free write, I like to pick out certain sentences and paragraphs that really say what my topic is about or sentences that are very descriptive and creative that make my paper sound more interesting, and divide them into paragraphs and elaborate more on that one sentence meaning or paragraph meaning. I then eventually have a paper, my first draft. I take a little break from my paper, give my mind a rest. When I come back to the paper, I begin to read it out loud. That will help me to fix any grammatical errors I may have. I then continue to edit and rewrite sentences or add in more words and ideas til I get the perfect paper. When I achieve this state I make sure more than one person reads my paper. So they can edit and give me insight to what they feel about this paper. When that is all said and done and rewrite my paper once more with all the edits I might need to do and finish it off once and for all. All of these pre-writing tools successfully help me write my papers. I use to not do any pre-writing, I use to just write and write, rewrite and finish, I didn't care much about how my paper got done. Just that it got done. But when I started brainstorming ideas and free writing on each idea and picking one with more detail I realized that my papers have become better and more organized and more in depth.