In general, the answer to this question is yes and no. As a reminder, the Writing Process consists of Pre-Writing (brainstorming, finding a topic, thesis, outline), Writing (Writing your Rough draft) and Re-writing (Revision and Proofreading).
For this blog for instance, I find topics by reading research articles, writing things down in a notebook, sometimes I use an outline, sometimes I write all in one sitting. Sometimes, I do write out ideas in my notebook for future blog posts. If I find something interesting in what I read, I write that down in my notebook. I keep an 'idea' notebook to find inspiring ideas for my blog. Then I know what 3 blog posts I will write for the next day.
It all depends on the subject. Most of the time, I just write down notes and interesting points I find in readings I have done. Then, I think back to see how I can explain the topic and how it applies to me or if I have experienced the topic.
And then, I write down what I think of the topic on the blog. I then supplement what I write down from my notes or from the reading.
Like for this blog post, I took no notes, and this is just a one draft one time deal. So for this blog post, no, I did not follow the Writing Process completely. For this blog post, I did not do a mind map, I did not write an outline, and I did not even visualize the paper in my head like I usually do.
I am just freewriting this blog post in a metacognitive way. I am doing a think aloud exercise of exactly what I am thinking as I am writing this post and I am writing down or remembering how I came up with this topic to write this post.
When I used to do think aloud exercises with my face to face students, I would do pretty much the same thing. As I write my paper in real time, I would tell my students out loud what I was thinking to write my essay or story as I am doing right now with this blog post.
For more complicated papers, yes, I read about the topic, then I visualize the entire paper in my head, and then I write down in my outline what I visualized in my head and from that outline flows my first rough draft.
When I teach the Writing Process, I tell students it is not a rigid process because every writer has his/her own way of thinking and processing when they write. The Writing Process just describes in general the human cognitive process as it produces writing but the Writing Process does not take into consideration individual preferences, cultural contexts of each student.
As Irene Clark says in her Concepts in Composition book, writing is a recursive process where you create, write, revise and then revise, create write over at different times.
Each writer has his own style when he writes. For the most part, I have noticed though that the more students revise and proof read their paper, the better grade they get.
Generally if you sit down and just write one draft the night before a paper is due, you get a lower grade because you do not take the time to fix typos.
So the answer to the question, Does Prof. Ho follow the Writing Process, yes, for more complicated papers, but no for less complicated papers. Yes and No.
Do you follow the Writing Process when you write your papers?
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