What do you think about when you write? What thoughts go through your head as you brainstorm a topic? Do you visualize the paper ahead of time? Do you write it all down? Do you mind map? How do I stick to the main topic? Where do I find the evidence? or if I am writing a story, how do I build up the suspense? How do I keep the story going? What should be my dramatic ending? Should I write the ending first and then write the story around it?
Everybody has a different way that they write. Some people panic when they are confronted with a blank piece of page.
Even writing this blog every day can be daunting for me because I have to always come up with a new topic all the time and sometimes that causes anxiety.
I ask myself constantly, what new topic should I write about? How do I keep this blog fresh? What would my audience/niche want to read about? How do I stay current and interesting? How do I avoid the trap of saying the same thing over and over again? (which I do in my blog posts)
When I voice out loud these thoughts to my students, this writing practice is called metacognition. In other words, you make students aware of what you are thinking, the doubts you are having, the difficulties you are having as you write. Then, the good part, you share with students as you write how you overcome these difficulties and these doubts--that's how students learn how you write.
When I teach writing using the Writing Process style, I write alongside my students. As I sit in front of my blank page, I voice out loud what I am thinking. I also have the students do the same thing. They voice out loud what they are thinking and how they are going to proceed with their writing.
For Writing and Discussion
Reflecting on your own Writing Process
The goal of this assignment is to enable you to gain conscious awareness of the process you use to write papers that are assigned in classes (and the extent to which that process might be different when you write for other purposes. Such consciousness will help you not only to evaluate the effectiveness of your writing process and make adjustments to it, but also to formulate your own 'theory' of writing. (Clark, 7)
Clark, Irene. Concepts in Composition. Theory and Practice in Teaching of Writing.
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