Author: Karin Admiraal

Photo of crumpled paper by a trash can to illustrate the frustrations of drafting.

Writing Like a Graduate Student: Drafting

Posted on by Karin Admiraal

Drafting is the part of the writing process in which you take ideas and, in the terminology of Flower and Hayes (1981), “translate” them into written words. If you have done brainstorming or freewriting activities, you will already have written words. If you have done outlining activities, you will have a basic structure in place. Attending to these parts of the writing process can make drafting easier, but at some point, you will still need to do the hard work of making letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs appear on that blank screen.

Hand holding a pen a writing.

Why — and How — to Use an Outline

Posted on by Karin Admiraal

Outlining, at the most basic level, is creating a plan for your writing. This plan can be in your head only or written down. It can be detailed or simple. Early in my dissertation process, I created a three-page outline with citations that I shared with my chair and another committee member to make sure my plan made sense to them. On the other hand, before I started to write this post, I simply jotted down a few key points, and now I am filling in the spaces between them. Both processes helped me organize my thoughts.

Photo of starting blocks for a swimming race to illustrate the importance of prewriting in the writing process for a dissertation or thesis.

How to Start Your Writing Project

Posted on by Karin Admiraal

Thinking of writing as a process can help you get started. And prewriting is the first step. Instead of staring at the proverbial blank page, assign yourself some prewriting tasks. What is prewriting? It’s all the activities you do before you start to write the first draft of your project. This, of course, includes research, but I’ll save that topic for another post (or series). Today, we’ll focus more narrowly on activities closer to the actual writing.

Photo of colorful ingredients and hands preparing food to illustrate the writing process.

Writing Like a Graduate Student: Trust the Process

Posted on by Karin Admiraal

Writing is a process. So is baking. But writing is not like baking a cake, where once you have stirred in the eggs, you are finished with that part and can move on to the sugar. Rather, writing is more like cooking a complicated sauce. You add a little cayenne, taste to see how that worked, then maybe add a bit more until you achieve the flavor you’re looking for.

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